


No Prayer for the Dying

by 2ndA



Category: Dead Like Me, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-10
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2ndA/pseuds/2ndA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>crossover, from a Dead Like Me perspective.<br/>Dean Winchester sold his soul to the devil to save his brother.  Hie year is up; the reapers are here to collect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Iron Maiden song, first chapter epigraph from Virgil, second chapter epigraph by Thornton "Our Town" Wilder

**Death twitches my ear. _Live_ , he says, _I am coming._**

_  
_

    I pull into the Der Waffle Haus lot only ten minutes late—pretty good, considering that today is a fucking holiday and I shouldn’t even be out of bed yet anyway.  Still, I can see through the plate glass window: Roxy and Daisy are already at the regular table _.  An undead cop and an undead actress walk into a waffle store,_ I tell myself as I pull open the door.  I can’t think of a punchline.

As I get closer, I can hear them speculating on just what it is that has Mason curled into the corner of the booth with his jacket over his face.  

“Pill or powder?”  Daisy asks cheerily, like the chipper morning-person she is.

“Fuck.  Off,” Mason moans, like the perpetually hungover British boozehound _he_ is. This morning, he’s a much more convincing reaper than Daisy:  he actually looks half-dead.

“Oh, sweetie, we can’t guess if you don’t narrow it down a little.  You’ll take anything!”

“D’ja hear that?” Mason manages to sit up enough to lay his head on the table.  He waggles his eyebrows at Roxy.  “She called me _sweetie_.”

Roxy adds milk to her coffee. “Daisy wouldn’t know sweet if it wore a fucking nametag.”

“It _is_ just an expression,” the actress concedes apologetically as she inspects her makeup.  She catches sight of me over the rim of her compact.  “Good morning, sweetie.”

I glance down at my t-shirt: no name tag.  Damn. “Happy Independence Day, God bless us every one,” I announce magnanimously.  Mason kind of smells, so I wedge myself in next to Daisy and Roxy, who rolls her eyes.  Way to ruin my holiday mood. “What?  He looks like he’s gonna hurl,” I point to Mason, who groans obligingly on cue.

“Not Independence Day ‘til Monday, George,” Roxy observes sourly.

“I’m taking advantage of the Happy Days liberal leave policy,” I inform her. Having collated twelve hundred copies of the temp agency’s employee manual, I know my rights. “July 4th is Monday, so employees have the option of taking off the preceding Friday to make a long weekend.  I took the option.” Reaping souls so they don’t rot along with their respective corpses is an unpaid…well, call it a public service.  The temp agency pays the bills: gas for the car I borrowed from one of my souls, tips at our daily Waffle Haus meetings, loans that Mason keeps promising to pay back.  Two jobs—that’s two more than I ever held in the 18 years I was alive.  Seems like when you’re spontaneously slaughtered by falling space debris, the universe should give you a break, but nobody ever said death was fair.    

§

“Death takes a holiday,” Rube says from behind us.  Startled, we all jump—Mason knocks his head on the tabletop and whimpers pitifully.

“You know,” Daisy begins, “Frederic March and I once got to know each other in an elevator at the Hotel d’—”

“What’s up with him?”  Rube interrupts, pulling up a chair from another table so he doesn't have to sit next to Mason. 

“Drain-o?” Roxy suggests.

Daisy claps her hands.  “Absinthe!”

“Don’t look at me,” I say, “I just got here!”

Exasperated, Rube throws up his hands. “Would it _kill_ you to look out for one another occasionally?”

“Probably not,”  _wait for it, wait for it_ “since we’re already dead,” I joke.  Hey, I thought it was funny.  I suspect sense of humor has a half-life: the longer you’re dead, the more it decays.  Look at Rube: he’s been a reaper longer than any of us, and he never smiles.

Boss-man just shakes he head and opens his little planner.  “Group reap,” he announces, handing out post-its bearing the names of the soon-to-be-deceased.  “I want you to stick together today.  No dress code,” which means it isn’t some sort of a multicar pileup or a building collapse or anything where a bunch of people go out together.  That’s good…well, for the obvious reasons, but also good ‘cause I haven’t done laundry in too long.  If we all had to pretend to be office workers or symphony-goers, my jeans would a little out of place.  

Mason doesn’t move from where he’s sprawled on the table, so Rube sticks the post-it to his forehead.  The Brit moans an acknowledgment.

“The fuck is wrong with you, Mason?” Rube demands wearily. “What’d you take this time?”

Mason mumbles something unintelligible into the varnish of the table top.

“What?”

One shaky hand pulls up the corner of the post-it so Mason can squint out at the world.  “Dimetapp,” he says again, sounding congested and roughly nine years old. “I have a fucking summer cold, orright?”

“Oh, for the love of all that’s holy—Kiffany!”  Rube calls over our regular waitress, “Would you get a glass of orange juice for Mason here, before he drowns in self-pity and his own snot?”

“One OJ, coming up.  Anything else?”

There’s the usual flurry of ordering—Mason has to borrow money, Daisy can’t decide if she’s on a diet or not, Rube wants to know who cooked the hash this morning, today might be the day I finally order something other than my usual oatmeal with raisins.  Roxy oversees it all with her usual expression of faint disgust, and then something changes.  “S. Winchester,” she says suddenly. 

“Hmm?”  Daisy is rearranging the menus so they all square up and face the same way.  A involuntary shiver snakes up my spine; that is _so_ something my mother would do.

“I got a post-it saying I’m supposed to reap some S. Winchester and you—” Roxy’s hand shoots out toward Mason’s head. He yelps and ducks.  “Oh, gimme your fucking post-it, dumbass.”

Mason plucks the post-it out of his hair, squints at it.  “D. Winchester. I’m to reap D. Winchester. Any relation, d’you think?”

“No,” Daisy looks confused.  She pulls a post-it from her décolletage. “ _I’ve_ got D. Winchester.”

I dig into my jeans pocket, where I’d stuffed my own post-it when Rube had handed it to me.  I’d only glanced at it—thinking too hard about reaps to come ruins my appetite.  In fact, my stomach is already feeling a little funny, but that’s because I kind of recall…I unfold the crumpled yellow note and there, in Rube’s  quick capitals: _D. Winchester_.

I hold it up wordlessly.  We all turn to stare at Rube.

“ _Don’t look at me_ ,” he mimics, “ _I just got here_.”

“You’re the one who gets the…information,” Roxy growls, dropping her voice so the surrounding tables can’t hear. “Souls that need to get reaped, where they’re gonna die, when it’s gonna happen.  You telling me four people named Winchester—three of ‘em, first initial D., are all gonna die today?”

“Triplets?” Daisy wonders aloud. “Daniel, Donald, and…something else with a D?”

 "David?"  Mason supplies.  "Dwight.  Dexter.  Maybe it's a girl!  Diane. Dana. D—"

“Hey, what’s on your post-its?” I ask suddenly, and I don’t really expect an answer. Rube stands on formality about crap like this: your reap is _your_ reap and you don’t share it unless you need help identifying the target or maintaining a plausible cover story.

To my surprise, Rube lays out his two post-its.  “T. McMullen and B. Purkis,” he reads aloud.

“B. Purkis?”  Mason asks.  “ _Barry_ Purkis?!  Thunderstick is gonna get reaped?!”

I guess we fail to look suitably impressed; Mason seems a bit put out at this lack of response.

“Ok, I give,” I say, “Who is Barry Purkis?”

“George, George, George…Barry Purkis used to be the drummer for Iron Maiden,” Mason says, like this should be obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. “He used to drum in a _cage._ A fucking cage.  We are like...soul brothers, me and Thunderstick.  Why don’t I ever get any of the cool reaps?”

“Uhh, excuse me? D. Winchester?” Roxy reminds us.

“What about him?” Rube asks patiently.

“Why he got three appointments? One is good enough for everybody else.”  Roxy looks like she’s about to say more, but Kiffany arrives with our orders.

“Guess he’s a difficult guy to get in touch with,” Rube says mildly.  “Somebody wants to make sure he keeps at least one of those engagements.”

One of our yellow post-its floats to the floor as Kiffany puts down a plate of bacon (extra, extra, extra crispy). She stoops to pick it up before anyone can stop her.  

“Winchester,” she reads, sounding thoughtful.  “Like the gun?”

§

 

 **D. Winchester**  
Sidewalk, in front of Mitchell Hall, East Quad  
E.T.D. 10:57 A.M.

“Like the gun?”  Kiffany asks, and I don’t know why, but it weirds me out that weapons are the first thing to come to her mind.  Reaping is actually my safe job (do you have any idea how many people die in office-related accidents every year? I do) and anyway, I’m already dead.  But still, bad juju, man.  I’m estimating our waitress’s experience with firearms—looks can be deceiving; the temp agency receptionist retired from Special Forces—when Rube points to my oatmeal.

“Can we get that boxed up to go?”

“What?!”  I put my arm protectively around my bowl, looking to Roxy for support.

The cop, though, is staring over my head out the plate glass window.  “Oh, he did _not,”_ she says to no one in particular, “Tell me that fucker carrying a _tennis racquet_   didn’tjust park in a _handicapped spot_ ,” She’s already shoving me out of the booth, the better to deliver the righteous wrath of the Law.

Kiffany swoops in and snags my breakfast. 

“Daisy’s, too,” Rube nods at the fruit plate, “and put the orange juice in a paper cup.”

“Uhh?”  Mason mumbles.

“The girls have an appointment to keep,” Rube explains around a strip of bacon. “And you just get on my last fucking nerve.”

Daisy jumps up.  “Got to powder my nose, my audience awaits.  Meet you at the car.”

“How come I have to drive Miss Daisy?”  I pout, sliding back into the booth.  “Why don’t you drive?”

“I got other things to do this morning, peanut.”

“Like I don’t?”  I had to…sleep in, for one thing, cause it _is_ practically a holiday.  I needed to lay out and get some color.  I needed to mope around the house and make Daisy nuts until she finally gives up on this diet shit and insists we go out for ice cream. I needed to consider, and then reject, attending to the growing pile of laundry that is slowly taking over my room.  Oh, yeah, I have big plans.

“All right, so what important things do _you_ have to do?”  I ask, and as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know they’re a mistake.  Rube stops chewing.  He stops fiddling with his napkin.  He stops everything and just looks at me.

“I once knew a cat, peanut, came to a very sad end…”

“Cruri—curiousitity.  Curio _sity_.”  Mason interjects sleepily, and I wonder how much alcohol the FDA puts in cough medicine these days.

“You remind me of that cat.”  Rube snaps open the _Post-Intelligencer_ and suddenly I’m look at a quarter-page advertisement for Seattle Star Fine Wines & Liquors.  They always buy space on the back of the obits; targeted marketing, I guess.

“Shut up,” I tell Mason.  “I’m leaving without you.” 

“It kilt that cat, Georgie, the cruriostity did,” Mason continues, stumbling out of the booth after me.

“ _Yes_ , Mason, I got the fucking metaphor.”

He slings an arm around my shoulder as I push open the door; he smells like orange juice and that fake-grape kids’ medicine.  When I was little, I always insisted that Mom get the grape kind, even though she explained that the grape was just flavoring and had nothing to do with the medicine...or with real grapes, for that matter.  She was wrong: the grape kind always made me feel better faster.  “You’ll be ok, though, Georgie.  Cats have nine lives, you know.  Can I ride shotgun?”

“I’m riding shotgun,” Daisy calls from where she’s leaning against my car. 

“But I asked first,” Mason whines.

“Riding in the back ruins my hair,” Daisy explains patiently.

“Then can I drive?”

“No!” Daisy and I say together.  Besides the fact that he’s a walking pharmacopoeia, Mason still looks the wrong way when crossing the street.  I try to imagine him as a little boy in England, someone holding his hand and teaching him to look right-left-right.  I can’t picture it.

“Where are we going, anyway?”  I ask.

Daisy slides into the front passenger seat. “The college.  Sidewalk in front of Mitchell Hall.  Maybe a jumper.”

“…catch my fucking death,” Mason mumbles from the back seat as I pull out onto Decatur Street.

 §

Mitchell Hall is on the East Quad, which I know pretty well, and my dad’s office in the English Department is all the way on the other side of campus.  I suggest parking on the west side and walking to Mitchell, but Daisy protests that she’s wearing sandals, not hiking boots, and besides, she has very delicate alabaster skin that burns if she spends too much time outdoors.

“What _ever_ ,” I say, and pull into a two-hour spot by the quad.  It’s not like I care where we park. Dad probably wouldn’t be on campus anyway; he and Mom and Reggie would have left early this morning to beat the holiday weekend traffic down to the lake.

He certainly hadn't been the only one with that idea—campus is deserted.  East Quad is empty except for one guy camped out on the retaining wall by the fountain, reading a paperback.  The cheese stands alone.

“D. Winchester, I presume?” Mason says sourly.

“You stay here and lay low,” Daisy instructs him, not taking her eyes off the boy with the book. 

“Why?”

Daisy rolls her eyes. “Because you make such a convincing white knight that you’ll ruin my damsel in distress act.” She is fluffing her hair in the side mirror when someone comes out of Mitchell Hall.  The portico casts a shadow in the July sun, so we can’t see anyone, but the slam of the old hinge-sprung wooden door echoes off the surrounding buildings.  Mitchell is, I remember suddenly, the home of the Classical and Modern Languages Department.

The guy with the book jumps up and waves.  “Dean!” he calls, sounding relieved.

“Bean?”  Mason whispers. “Did he just call him _bean_?”

“ _Dean_ ,” I correct.

“Oh.  Sorry.  Bit stuffed up over here.”

I glance over at Daisy.  She is just standing by the car with her mouth slightly open.

“You know, Dean starts with a D,” I point out. 

Her mouth snaps shut.  “Why, yes.  Yes, Georgia, I am aware of that. Come with me.” She tosses her hair and checks the delicate watch she stole off a dead stewardess three months ago.  Involuntarily, I note the time on the dashboard clock. 10:30. Time to get this show on the road.: D. Winchester, the Final Tour.

“Yoo-hoo!” she calls, picking her way across the grass toward to intercept Dean at the foot of the Mitchell Hall stairs. “Excuse me, my name is Daisy, Daisy Adair. My sister and I seem to have lost our tour gro—”

Just as Dean turns, the heel of Daisy’s summer sandal catches on the edge of the sidewalk.  She lets out a quick shriek and pitches forward. How he catches her, I don’t know.  Must have the reflexes of a fucking cat, because I was caught by surprise and I’m supposed to predict these little accidents. 

“Hello, beautiful,” Dean says, like women fall into his arms every day. “Fancy meeting you here.” Who the hell knows, maybe women do—I can see why Daisy was speechless at the car: she can identify what she calls 'gentlemen of interest'  from a half mile away.  And Dean is definitely interesting, in a green-eyes, broad-shoulders kind of way. Why does she always get the goodlooking reaps, anyway? _Hi, I'm Daisy, Daisy Adair.  And you are hot like burning._

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Daisy breathes.  “I’m terribly—how embarrassing!  It’s these silly heels, I should know better, really…” 

The gentleman just winks and sets her on her feet.  Or tries to.  Daisy yelps as soon as her left foot touches the ground. 

“Oh, goodness!”  Daisy really does sound like she’s in pain.  If I didn’t know that she was both an actress and a reaper, I’d be a little worried.  _Would it kill you to look out for one another_ , Rube had asked.

“Uhh, Daisy?”  I ask.

Dean turns and smiles at me.  Oh, God, he has dimples. “Beautiful car,” he remarks and it takes me a minute to realize he’s talking to me.  Point to him: guys never talk to me when Daisy’s around. “Got a first aid kit in the glove compartment or anything?”

I manage to get my tongue unstuck from the roof of my mouth.  “Uhh…no, I, uhm.  I just—I inherited it.  Recently. Like, really recently.” It’s suddenly important that Dean think I’m a responsible car-owner, though I don’t know why I care so much. 

Daisy whimpers, which I personally think is overplaying her hand a little, but it does regain Dean's attention. “I gotcha, babe.  Why don’t you just sit right down here and let me take a look at it.” He settles Daisy on one of the steps and glances around the mall.  “Hey, Sammy!” he yells, “bring the bag.”

Sammy is the guy with the book, it turns out, when he comes stalking across the quad with his bookbag and his paperback copy of _Spoon River Anthology_.  He doesn’t look happy to see us, which is a little unnerving.  People are always happy to see Daisy.

“Sammy, this is Daisy, Daisy Adair.  And her sister, uh…”

“Millie,” I supply. 

“Millie!” Dean grins, like now that the introductions are finished, we can commence with becoming the best of friends.

Sammy is not so crazy about that plan.  “Uh, Dean?  Can I talk to you?”

“Talk away, buddy,” Dean unzips the pack, pulls out a few more paperback classics and some fruit roll-ups. “We bring the first aid kit?”

“No, I mean, can I _talk_ to you?  Alone? Now.”  When Sammy stands up straight, he’s tall.  Really tall, and when he grabs Dean’s jacket, Daisy’s savior tenses and then shrugs.  “Sure, Samster, let’s talk.”  This smile is _different._ Not unhappy, exactly, just kind of...tired _._ “Excuse us, ladies.”

§

I drop down to sit next to Daisy.  “Look, are you all right?  Did you really—”

A sweatshirt (Stanford.  Not bad.), a bunch of twigs tied with red ribbon (what the fuck?), a really hardcore flashlight (I’m grabbing that, after; the basement of our house creeps me out). 

“Ouch, _shit_!” Daisy hisses.  “Who the hell keeps a fillet knife in a bookbag?” The cut heals almost immediately, but the bloodstains on the sweatshirt are gonna  be a bitch.  One-handed, she pulls out a sheaf of photocopies, a whetstone, and, finally, unearths a notebook.  Leather cover and bristling with post-its, it reminds me of Rube’s ledger. With a practiced flip, Daisy opens the front cover: _Dean Winchester._

“Oh,” Daisy says quietly. “Hello, there, Dean.”

“Fine, if that’s how you want it!” 

I jump and look up Dean’s walked away from Sammy, bringing them back into hearing range. 

Dean is literally five minutes from dead, but when I think about the stony expression with which he listened to Sammy, I really, really don’t want him to find we’ve been through his things.

“Ok, then,” Sammy says, throwing up his hands.  “Fine.  It's your...just.  Fine!” 

“Ladies!” Dean returns with a smile.  He pops open the first aid kit. “How are you feeling, Daisy Adair? Can I interest you in some Codeine? Or—” he paws through the box, “perhaps a…batman band-aid?  Sammy, man, he loves these.”

Sammy glowers from a few feet away.  I have sneaking suspicion that Sam is not, for all his use of the word, fine. Jealous boyfriend, I decide, thinking about the grabbiness, the lover's spat.  Hell, if I had Dean Winchester, I’d be jealous, too.

“No, no,” Daisy is saying, “I’m sure I’ll be fine.” _Fay-uhn_. Her accent —slightly more red dirt than red carpet—always gets stronger when she's nervous. Suddenly, I'm nervous, too. “Is there any way you could perhaps escort me to mah cah?  I fear I may be a little heavy for poor Georgia. And please, we were never properly introduced.  What _is_ my hero’s name?”

Sammy and I roll our eyes in unison.  Dean just grins.  “Dean Winchester, at your service, Miss Daisy Adair.” I see the quick flashburn of his soul as Dean takes Daisy’s hand and then he jerks back like he’s been electrocuted.

“Dean?!”

“Nothing, Sam, it’s just a chill,” he shivers theatrically,  “You know, someone walking over my grave.”

He says it jokingly but it is too-the-fuck weird for me.  I grab Daisy’s oversized purse and am backing away before I even start to speak, “I’ll just…go carry this to the car.”

I can hear them chatting as I forge across the quad ( _now, tell me: Winchester…like the gun?  You know, people always say that_ …) I keep my eyes on my shoes even when I hear footsteps behind me; the grass out here can be treacherous.

“I thought your name was Millie.” Sammy.

“It is.”

“Your sister called you Georgia.”

“Uh, family nickname.”

“Which do you like better?”

That stops me cold.  No one’s ever asked me that, they just make me fucking correct them until they get the idea. “George,” I say finally.  “I don’t like Millie or Georgia.  I like George.”

“Hi, George.  I’m Sam.”  _Not Sammy_ , I think as I shake his huge hand.  And, oh, more dimples.

There’s a peal of laugher and we turn to see Dean nearly overbalance as he and Daisy hobble along behind us.

“No offense to your sister,” Sam says apologetically, “I’m glad we could help out—it’s just, Dean’s always, you know, getting distracted by people’s problems and we kind of…  Uhm, we’re coming up on a deadline.”

I smile up at him.  Sammy, boy, you have no fucking idea.

“Well, you know what they say,” I offer lamely.  “What goes around comes around.  Good karma and all that.”

“Yeah,” Sam laughs grimly.  “And all that.”

“Anyway, it’s fine.  Daisy can be a little…you know.”

“Older siblings.  Tell me about it.”  There’s a moment of silence; neither of us have anything else to say.  

“So,” Sam continues, “you’re taking the tour?  Gonna go to school here?”

“I dropped out,” I confess, because he's just too honest to lie to. He looks like a sweet guy, protectiveness aside, just a little older than me.  Dean’s probably his first boyfriend. I hope the death doesn’t fuck him up too bad: Sam seems like the type to brood.

“Yeah,” he says, “me too.” 

“Planning to go back?” I’m just making conversation.  Of course he is.  Everybody is always on their way back to school, just taking some time off, getting their heads straight, padding their bank accounts.  They’re absolutely going back next semester…or the one after that…or maybe in the fall…

His brow furrows, like he really has to think about it.  “No,” he says, finally.

“Me, neither,” I say.

I wait for well, _you never know_ , or _you’re so young, you might reconsider_ , or one of the other regular lines. Sam just shrugs, “Well, as someone once told me, at least we’re living our lives. And nobody else’s.”  

For some reason, that makes me laugh.  “I like that,” I say, as I unlock the car door.  

Sam squints across the street.  “Is that your boyfriend who’s been watching us?”

I turn to see Mason peering from a line of shrubs that edge one of the other academic buildings.  _This_ is his idea of laying low?  “Oh, no.  No…we’re not…”

Dean and Daisy 's arrival saves me from having to explain my non-relationship with Mason.  Somehow in the process of getting Daisy, her injured foot, and her discarded sandal situated in the car, I end up shaking Sam’s hand again.  “Anyway, thanks a lot.  And be sure to thank, uh, your …” I pause, not sure which PC term is in this week, and Sam suddenly blushes bright red.

“Oh, God, no.  _We’re_ not….he’s my brother. Dean’s my older brother.”

Now it’s my turn to blush.  I want to explain that I grew up on Beatrice Lane, where everyone is white and middle-class and hetero, but Dean’s waving us off before I can get my foot out of my mouth.  

“Gorgeous car,” he says again, “Take care, now."  I’m not sure if he’s talking about the convertible or my ostensibly injured sister, so I just smile and nod.  Smile and nod, works as well in death as in life.

Daisy turns in her seat.  “You, too,” she says, suddenly sober, “Take care, Dean Winchester.”

 §

I pull out of the parking space and around the corner, where I put the car into neutral and we wait for the soul of Dean Winchester to catch up.

“Mason?” I call.  There’s a rustle in the hedges and Mason emerges with twigs in his hair.  

“You’re late,” he sniffles, clambering into the back seat amidst a flurry of discarded tissues.  

“Oh, like _you_ have anywhere to be,” Daisy snaps.  “Such a nice young man.  A true shame. We could have had gorgeous children together, Dean Winchester and I.  Did I ever tell you about the time I met _James_ Dean?  It was in Santa—”

“We _are_ late,” I say.  The car’s clock reads 11:14. Daisy checks her watch and then she goes as pale as I’ve ever seen her,which is saying something.  That delicate alabaster shit is no joke.  She jumps out of the car and stands panicked in the middle of Regents Drive.  Then she pulls off her one remaining sandal and starts to run back to the quad.

Mason and I turn to stare. Daisy saunters.  Daisy glides.  Daisy might, if circumstances absolutely demanded, sashay.  I didn’t even know she _could_ run. 

Mason groans. "Don't tell me she was too busy flirting to take take the bloody soul?”

“She did!  I saw it.”  He even felt it go, which is a little uncommon: only about 15% of the population can, it’s something genetic, according to Rube.

“And then what happened?”

“Well…nothing.  I mean, she made sure it was him, and then she reaped the soul, and then he walked us back to the car with his brother.”  Sam, aka Sammy, aka S. Winchester who, I realize, has an appointment of his own to keep this afternoon.

“What about the gravelings?” Mason wants to know.

“I didn’t see any, but I wasn’t really _looking_ all that closely.” It's possible that I missed them,  I mean, they're sneaky little bastards.

Mason looks concerned.  It’s not a good look for him.  “That’s just…really strange, that is.   _He_ was there, and _you_ _lot_ were there, right time, right place, and—nothing happened?”

“Well, nothing _fatal_ , if that’s what you mean.”

“Of course that’s what I bloody well mean.” Mason scrubs the leaves out of his hair pensively.  “Never known that to happen before, for an appointment to just…not go off."  He cuts his eyes toward me. "Did you really not do anything to, you know, _change_ things?”

“Mason! I am shocked, shocked that you would suggest—”

“Georgia,” he says. I can’t remember the last time he called me by my full name. “I’m serious.” And he really, really is.

“We didn’t do anything we weren't supposed to, I swear.”  My stomach feels a little like it does when I read Rube’s post-its while eating. I put the car into gear and do a three-point turn back toward the quad. 

§

We find Daisy standing in the middle of the green, barefoot and grass-stained.  Her hair is slipping out of its twist.  I don’t recognize her expression for a moment, because I’ve never seen it before: Daisy Adair looks like she’s going to cry.  

“Daisy, what’s—”

“It’s not here, Georgia,” she whispers. “His body.  His...his soul."

“Are you sure?  Did you look? Where was the last place you put it?” Mason demands nervously, spinning around so he can see the whole quad, like perhaps there’s an entire person hiding in plain sight. 

Mitchell Hall, the Sarcross Building, the Platt Memorial Fountain: East Quad in all its July glory, and not a single living soul. Just the three of us.     

§

 **B. Purkis**  
Records Division, Unified Family court  
King County Courthouse  
E.T.D. 12:39 P.M.

 

It isn't until Mason and I steer a distraught Daisy back to the car that I realize I don’t know where we’re going.  Rube’s always been the one to find me _me_ , showing up to deliver his damn post-its at work, at my house, or once, memorably, in a movie theater during a matinee showing of _Charlotte’s Web_.(Shut up.  My sister Reggie went to see it and I sat in the back and watched her more than the screen.). When Rube wants to find someone, he’s as relentless as…well, death.  I never asked for a phone number, an email address; I never thought _I’d_ be the one looking for _him_.

Mason once went to Rube’s apartment, but since he doesn’t drive, his jumbled directions involve going the wrong way up one-way streets, climbing over back fences to cut through people’s yards, and jimmying locks.  Frankly, I don’t think Daisy is up for that today.  She sitting in the passenger seat, chewing nervously on her thumbnail, literally shaking.  She doesn't even flinch when Mason drapes one of his shapeless, beat-to-hell jackets around her.  It’s when she doesn’t comment on the smell, or the clashing colors, or the raggedy left cuff that I _know_ something’s desperately wrong.

“Oh, God, that poor boy.” Daisy says in a tiny voice. “Rube is going to _kill_ me, Georgia,”

“Oh, I hope he does something more original than _that_ ,” I say, but neither Daisy nor Mason laugh.  “Oh, seriously, guys, come on!  What’s the worst that could happen?”

Apparently that’s exactly the wrong thing to say, because Daisy’s hand drops to her lap.  She stares at me, her eyes huge in a stark face.  “You don’t think…Rube wouldn’t _dismiss_ me, would he?” I don’t know what that means, exactly, and before I can create a convincing bluff, Daisy’s turned pleadingly to Mason, “He wouldn’t, Mason, would he?”

“No, no,” Mason pshaws, “of course not, love.  Something must have happened.  A change in plans, a…”  he looks desperately at me.

“…A reprieve,” I suggest, “A retraction!  A last minute phone call from the great big governor in the sky. Rube will know,” I say with as much confidence as I can.   

It’s taken us fifteen minutes just to convince Daisy to get into the car.  She kept insisting that Dean Winchester’s soul might still be lurking around somewhere.  I remember my kindergarten teacher telling the class that if we ever got lost, we should stay in one place until someone came to find us rather than wandering off and getting _more_ lost.  I’m pretty sure death does not abide by the same rules as kindergarten.  Still, the longer we waited, the more Daisy looked like she wanted to search the quad one more time, so finally I go to the only place I can think of.

§

“She, we …lost a friend,” I lie smoothly, guiding a nearly catatonic Daisy past Kiffany’s concerned flutterings and through the Waffle Haus lunch rush.  “It was, uh, very unexpected.” Behind me, Mason snorts a laugh, but Kiffany seems to take the words at face value.

“Oh, honey!  What a terrible thing! That’s awful news,” the waitress follows us to the table.  “You just sit right down and tell me what I can get you.”

Daisy looks puzzled; for a minute I think she’s going to ask for Dean Winchester’s soul in a carryout box, but she settles for “coffee, coffee would be fine, thank you.”

“Hot or iced?” Kiffany asks efficiently.

“Hot,” the actress sounds dazed, “as hot as it comes, Kiffany, please.”

“Same,” I add, because there’s nothing like coffee for keeping your hands busy when you’re nervous.  I’m already building a sugar-packet Taj Mahal when Kiffany comes back with coffee and Mason’s orange juice.

Mason gropes Daisy and, really, horndog, this is _so not the time_ —but then he produces a bottle of magenta cold medicine from the pocket of the jacket he leant her. He pours in a healthy glob and then stirs it with the milky spoon he snitches right off my saucer.  I watch in sick fascination as he downs a few gulps of the puce liquid. Jesus fucking Christ, I’m surrounded by savages.

“I don’t know what you think orange juice is going to do,” I snap, “You’ve got a cold, not fucking scurvy.”

Mason looks like someone’s just kicked his puppy for no reason at all. He’s got an orange pulp mustache under fever-bright eyes, and it’s so pathetic that I’m actually on the brink of apologizing when I realize that Kiffany is still standing next to our table.

“Kiffany?”  She looks a little wary.  Of course, I _did_ just nearly bite Mason’s head off.  I sigh: if I apologized to everybody who deserves it, we’d be here all year.

“It’s not your friend with the notebook, is it?  Who passed?”  she adds because I must look confused.

“What?  Oh, no.  Not Rube. Not someone you’ve ever met, actually. Just…a guy.  Uh, from work.”

“Good, well that’s good.  I mean, it’s terrible, your loss, but when I heard about the explosion down at the courthouse, and your friend saying just this morning that he had an appointment th—”

“He said he had an appointment at the courthouse?”

“I’m gonna go tell him what happened.  He…would want to know. About our friend,” I say, slow and deliberate.  The walls have ears.  More to the point, so does Kiffany. 

“Let me send you with some coffee.”  Kiffany bustles off and I jerk my head toward the counter to let Mason I know I want to talk with him alone.

Wedged between a diner stool and the muffin display, I twist my house key off its ring.  “Take Daisy home when she’s finished her coffee. I’ll come find you there once I get Rube.”

“Right-o,” Mason salutes me with his doctored OJ. "If it's really Barry Purkis, you'll get me an autograph, yeah?"

"Uh.  Mason—he'll be dead.  He can't hold a pen."

"Oh.  True.  Well, then, never mind." His voice drops. “Don’t forget, I’ve got an appointment this afternoon.”

Mason’s marginally less of a fuck-up as he looks, sometimes. I _had_ forgotten, both his appointment and my own.  I was still scheduled for D. Winchester, round 2.  Or maybe round 3, I couldn’t remember.  “I’ll be back in plenty of time,” I assure him. Oh.  “And what does it mean to be _dismissed_ , anyway?”  I try to put the same ominous spin on the word that Daisy had.

Mason takes a long drink, his fingers tight enough around the glass that the tips are white.  “It means,” he’s looking over my shoulder at Daisy, who is in turn staring into her coffee cup.  “It means your services are no longer required.”

“By?”

“By the establishment.”

“And what in the fuck is that supposed to—” someone taps my shoulder: Kiffany with two coffees in a paperboard tray. 

“I hear on the kitchen radio that they’re closing Jefferson street and Pioneer Square to traffic.  You should go down 4th Avenue,” the waitress advises.

“Thanks, Kiffany.”

“I just hope your friend is all right.”

“Oh, he’ll be fine.  He’s…pretty invincible,” I keep the _being already dead_ part to myself.

§

I leave them sitting at the table, island of stillness in the middle of the otherwise busy restaurant.  Mason’s staring at his hands.  His arms are wing-bone skinny between the sleeves of his raggedy-ass t-shirt and those stupid fingerless gloves he wears regardless of the weather.  Daisy’s got no arms at all, her whole body swallowed by the dark jacket.  She’s looking straight ahead, across the other customers, through the plate glass window to the parking lot.  I wave to her when I get to the car, but I don’t think that she can see me.  They really do look like they’ve lost something they loved. 

It sucks, how you can get used to something being one way and then all of a sudden, it’s not anymore.  Between them, Daisy and Mason probably had, hell, a thousand reaps that went off without a hitch, right according to schedule. And then, like a rabbithole to wonderland in a road you’ve walked down a thousand times, an appointment with no body and no soul. I mean, if you can’t rely on death, what constants are there?  Taxes?  Yeah, sure, trust the goddamn government? Fucking blows.

The traffic is unbelievable, everything re-routed and detoured and stopped for emergency vehicles.  My car radio doesn’t work—that’s what you get for taking cars from the souls of cheap-ass appliance salesmen.  Traffic is at such as stand-still that I finally roll down the window and ask one of the harried cops what’s going on. 

The cop’s belly hangs over his belt buckle and his face is flushed from the heat and the fury he’s expending on wayward drivers.  He’s about two risk factors short of a massive coronary, in my professional opinion.  “Explosion down at the courthouse,” he says, scanning the traffic behind me. “Some kind of propane leak caught—no, you don’t!  Hey— _you_!  In the Buick.  Settle down, motherfucker, wait your fucking turn!”

“Lot of damage?” I ask once the Buick driver is properly scolded.

“Hell, yeah!  That new annex went up like a birthday cake with too many candles.”

“Any casualt—I mean, oh, my God, was anyone hurt?”  I try to sound like a prurient, nosy rubber-necker, rather than someone with a professional interest, and maybe it works because the cop looks at me like maybe we shouldn’t be talking.

“Three dead, that I’ve heard of,” he says grudgingly.  “Should’ve been more, but there’s nobody actually in that building yet; groundbreaking was scheduled for next week.”

“Something broke ahead of schedule,” I mutter to myself.  Ahead of me, the traffic snarl begins to clear.

Officer Friendly chortles.  “Something broke….that’s pretty good!”   

I smile.  “Yeah, thanks.  I crack myself up, sometimes. Well, nice chatting. See you around.” Sooner than you think if you don’t lay off the doughnuts, big boy.

Officer Friendly is suddenly not-so-friendly.  “Don’t think so, ma’am.  Emergency personnel only.  You’ll have to follow the posted detour to Jefferson Street.”

“Do you know who I am, officer?” I pack my voice with outrage.  “Do you have any idea who you’re speaking to?”

The fucker actually _yawns_.  “ _To whom_ am I speaking?”

Shit. “I’m a…I’m a claims assessor.  For Fidelity Municipal Mutual.”  Or, at least, I sent a temp there last week, which is totally close enough.  “We’re insuring that new annex for the city and it’s imperative that I see the damage as soon as possible.”

“You got any ID, lady?”  but he’s looking a little nervous.

“Every minute that we tarry is costing the tax payers of this fair city.  I need to be on the site before anyone can interfere with evidence.” I think the _tarry_ may be a little too nineteenth century, but _evidence_ seems to carry the day. Friendly peers at me from under his uniform brim and then nods and waves me ahead.

“G’wan, but don’t be blocking no ambulances or I _will_ ticket your ass.”  Charmed, I’m sure.

I’m steering carefully down 4th, wishing I’d learned the cop’s name—maybe he knows Roxy—when I catch site of a familiar cap.  It takes me another block to find a parking space, then I grab the coffee and wend my way back around caution tape and chunks of debris to the little plaza by the Korean War Memorial where Rube is waiting. There are about a dozen firemen, a few people in business suits, and a group of EMTs in the plaza, but no one has the dazed, slightly shocky look of the newly deceased.

“I think you’ve been stood up,” I say, plunking myself down next to him on one of the memorial benches.

“He’ll be along,” Rube replies, unruffled, smoothing his post-it against his thigh.  I glance at it, check my watch.  B. Purkis is now 22 minutes late and counting.

“I really don’t think he will.”

“What makes you say that?”

I shrug. “Lot of that going around today.  Daisy popped her soul in time for a 10:30 appointment this morning and we’re still waiting for it to show up.”

“Daisy can be careless. Easily distracted.”

I think about Daisy, sitting lost in the restaurant booth while her coffee goes cold, and I think Rube can be a real asshole. Taking another look around the plaza, I nod slightly at one of the office workers wearing an oxygen mask.  Lisa.  Or Leslie.  We worked an apartment fire together last November.  Disaster scenarios like this are usually worked by people from different reaper cells; otherwise the same names keep showing up on the survivor lists.  I remember the three deaths the cop had mentioned. “Everyone _else_ ’s souls get off all right?” I ask, supremely innocent.

“Yes,” Rube says shortly.

“Hmm.  Strange.  Well, maybe you popped the wrong person.  It happens.” I smile encouragingly: butter wouldn’t melt…

“It was the right guy.  I was behind him when he signed in at the record’s office.  He had to show photo ID.”

“Daisy’s mark introduced himself and had labeled possessions.” That’s pretty much the reapers’ gold standard.

Rube just shrugs.

“Oh, come on!  Something’s up! Two people get reaped, and we have no bodies and no souls?  I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Why not?”

“ _Why not_?”  I sputter. I hadn’t really thought about it, it just seemed like a good point. “Because…because…well, the universe has got to be better organized than _that_!”

Rube smiles: “Ah, youth.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I demand. Ah, youth, my patronized youthful ass!

“Death comes on handwritten post-it notes, peanut!  It’s hardly a fool-proof system,” Rube shakes his head.  “Besides, my guy may show up yet.”

“Yeah,” I snort, “and Mason might learn to Just Say No, but I’m not holding my breath.”

“Where _is_ Mason, anyway?”

“I sent him home with Daisy.  She’s…”  I kick at a piece of broken concrete, send it skittering across the plaza, dig up another one with the toe of my shoe.  “She’s really freaked out, Rube. I’ve never seen her like this.”

“Daisy’s a big girl, she’ll be fine.” Like he hadn't just said she was careless and distracted.

“Hey, you’re the one who implied I should be looking out for my fellow travelers!"

“True,” he concedes. “But I didn’t think for a minute you’d actually listen.”

I don’t know what to say to that—it hurts more than I would have expected—so I just stand up.  “I’m going home.  I have to drive Mason to his 4:30.”

“He doesn't mind waiting, I’ll drive him,” Rube offers.  “I’ve got one at the same place, just a little later.”  It’s as much of an apology as I’m going to get. I don’t sit down again, but I don’t start walking, either

“Why’d you assign two reapers?”  That’s as much of an acceptance as _he’s_ going to get. Strictly speaking, reaps are non-transferable—you get who you get—but Rube, in his job as undead dispatcher, has some scheduling leeway.  If he’s got two marks at the same place and time, he’ll doesn’t like to tie up extra people.  He says it’s a seller’s market.

“S. and D. Winchester are brothers, and I don’t do families,” Rube says.

What the fuck?  “What do you mean you _don’t do_ families?”  Nobody ever told me we could pick and choose!  “In that case, I don’t do families, either.  Or kids younger than me, or sad old people, or pets.  Don’t do windows, either. Shit, Rube, if you get to choose, you may as well give away all your post-its.  Everybody has some kind of family.”

Rube doesn’t reply. He just sits, watching the firemen move their equipment with the bemused expression he gets when he’s waiting for me to “simmer down,” as he says.  He can wait like that all day: I’ve tested it.

“Fine.  Sorry.” I mumble at last.  Another few minutes of silence and I’m about ready to leave for home when Rube suddenly decides I’ve had enough of the silent treatment for today.

“You’re wrong, peanut: _everybody_ does not have a family.  There are more people on their own than you might think.  Secondly, it’s not ‘choosing.’  It’s ‘marshaling your resources’.”

I’m pretty sure I’m going to say something to land me in the eye of a shitstorm if I open my mouth, so I just give him a dubious look.

“What’s the cardinal rule of reaping, George?”

 “Uhm—get your man?”

Rube makes a see-saw motion with his hand.  “Close enough: do the job.  Don’t get attached, don’t get emotional, just pop the soul and get the job done. Now, the longer you do this, the more certain kinds of, uh, clients, begin to appeal to you.  Sometimes it’s something in your past, and sometimes it’s just over-exposure on the job, but it gets harder and harder to separate yourself from that class of client because of all the others that have come before.”

“Like, popping one little kid makes you think of all the other little kids you’ve popped?”

Rube nods. “That kind of thinking interferes.  You get angry, you get sad.  You get sloppy.  It’s why there are quotas, why we work in cells, so individuals don’t…” he waves his hand, like that substitutes for a verb.

“Burn out?”

“Sure, why not?”

“And you’re burnt out on families?”

Rube won’t look at me.  He watches Fire and Rescue reassemble their hoses instead.  “Yeah. Two or more relatives in the same day and—well, even popping that couple at their wedding was closer than I like to go.  Only did it because we were so short-handed that week.  Mason’s the same way with people falling to their deaths.  He _could_ do ‘em, but he really shouldn’t.  It's not good for him. So I try to assign those to somebody else when I can.”

“And Daisy?  Roxy?”

Rube looks at me, speculatively.  “Daisy ever tell you she had a sister?”

I shake my head.

“Well, ask her some time.  Maybe not today.  Roxy, now, she’s a pro.”  Rube shakes his head in admiration.  “Roxy can do anything.” He raises one eyebrow.  “So can you.”

“How come _I_ have to do families?,” I sulk, thinking about D. Winchester and his over-protective brother, S. “I’m the only one who even _has_ living relatives.”

“That’s why you have to do it, peanut.  You’re the expert.”

I’m not sure if that makes a lot of sense, or none at all.  I’m puzzling it out when something occurs to me.  “What did your reap look like?”

“Hmm?”

“B. Purkis. What did he look like?”

“You know, like a lawyer.  Suit and tie.” Rube gestures toward the few courthouse employees who are still being seen by the EMTs.  

“No, I mean, like—physically, what did he look like?”

Rube looks at me like he suspects I’ve been hitting Mason’s cough medicine a little hard.  “I don’t know. Young guy. Short hair.  Maybe my height.”

“What about his eyes?  Did he have dimples?”

“I took _his soul_ , peanut.  I didn’t ask him to the fucking prom!”

Would it be weirder to have two totally separate botched appointments, or two botched appointments for the same guy…only with different names?  Surely you can dodge death just by changing your name?  I mean, somebody must have tried that one already.   

“What are you thinking about?”  Rube asks suspiciously. 

“Just my next appointment,” I say.  “I’m gonna go check in with Mason and Daisy back at the house.  You still waiting for your guy?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s not coming.”

“He might.”

“He won’t”

“Such is life.”

“Ooookay.”

“Didn’t you ever read _Waiting for Godot_? What the hell do they teach you kids in school?”

“I think I was asleep that day.”  

The EMTs are finally packing up.  Now there are a bunch of people in hard-hats inspecting the cracks in the courthouse facade. Somehow, no one seems to care that Rube is sitting in the middle of it all. It’s pretty impressive, really: he says getting people to look right past you just comes with practice, but I’ll never be that good.

“Hey, Rube,” I call when I get to the curb, remembering something I’d realized earlier.

“What?”

“I think Kiffany has the hots for you.”

 

§

**D Winchester**

**Sunset Lodge  
E.T.D. 3:34 PM**

**T. McMillan**  
Sunset Lodge  
E.T.D. 3: 36 PM

The house is eerily quiet when I let myself in with the spare key (super secret hiding place: under Daisy’s potted petunia on the front step).  My own key, the one I’d given Mason, is on the hall table.  If not for that, it’s so still I’d think I was here alone.  I’m about to call Daisy’s name when I glance through the doorway into the living room and see the top of Mason’s head over the back of the couch.  He’s sprawled out with an empty bottle of cold medicine on the coffee table.  Daisy’s curled up into a little ball at the other end of the couch, her feet in his lap.

Mason’s eyes crack open.  “Heya, Georgie.”  He shifts out from under Daisy, careful not to wake her, and follows me out to the kitchen.

“Find Rube?”  he asks, still sounding congested.  He opens cabinets until he finds the one with the glasses, helps himself to orange juice from the fridge. He holds the carton out to me _want some?_ and I figure, what the hell.  Cures what ails you.

“Yeah.  His reap was late, too.”

“Weird.  Fucking weird.”

Rube finds us just like that—Mason leaning up against the counter, me seated at the breakfast table, the house settled around us—when he arrives half an hour later.  Roxy follows behind, still in her uniform and still in a rotten mood.

“Hey, where’d you find Roxy?”  I ask.  She’s another member of our merry band that I would never be able to contact in an emergency.

“Telepathy,” Rube responds.  “Used the secret reaper handshake to confirm her identity, but she knew it, so she must be the real Roxy.”

I'm pretty sure he's joking but...“wait—there’s a _handshake_?”

“Don’t be a moron; he called me on the phone, George.  The dispatcher put him through,” Roxy says, sounding even more pissed than usual.  “What part of ‘group reap’ don’t you all understand?”

“You were off enforcing law and order when we left,” Mason explains.

“Could have waited.”

“Well,” I offer, “you didn’t miss much: no reaping was actually done, no souls were harmed in the making of this morning.”

“Yeah, Rube’s been saying.”  Roxy settles down with her own glass of orange juice.  Mason’s starting a trend.

“So your Purkis never showed up?”  I ask

Rube glowers at me.  “So help me, peanut, first words out of your mouth sound even vaguely like _I told you so_ , and I’ll have you reassigned to some nursing home in Florida where they’ll keep you so busy you’ll never see the daylight again.”

I try to look injured.  I was _not_ going to say “I told you so.”  Not more than once or twice, anyway.

“Hey, sugar,” Rube says gently, and I’m peanut, so sugar must be…Daisy’s standing in the doorway, draped in the afghan from the couch.  She looks better, but still shaken.

“Rube, I am _so sorry_.  I don’t know what happened, I just—”

Rube holds up a silencing hand.  “Nothing to be sorry for, sugar.  Mason’s got an appointment with the same name in about an hour; yours just wasn’t meant to be.”  I notice he doesn’t say anything about his own reap not panning out.  Still, Daisy manages a wan smile and nods when Mason gestures to the orange juice.  He’s getting quite liberal with our breakfast beverage.

“Never heard of anything like it,” Roxy announces to the room at large.  I bet she’d accuse Daisy of making a mistake if the same thing hadn’t happened to Rube.  As it is, she manages to keep her suspicions unspoken—barely.

Mason must be thinking the same thing.  Before things can develop into a catfight (Roxy’s stronger, but Daisy wouldn’t fight fair), he pulls out his crumpled post-it. “Where’s this Sunset Lodge, anyway?”

“Up on the Fort Lawton side of Discovery Park,” Rube explains, “Hotel used to cater to the servicemen on leave—closed when they converted the fort to a training center.”  Rube's knowledge of abandoned Seattle real estate is really a little creepy sometimes.  Not the _most_ creepy thing about him, of course, but probably in the top fifteen.

“What’s D. Winchester doing at an out-of-business hotel?”

 _Dying_ , I'm about to say, but Rube stands up first.  “What say we find out?” he suggest.

“Can I come?” I ask.  I’ve got a little theory about B. Purkis that I want to try out.

“Why don’t you stay here with Daisy?” Mason asks, and normally I would think his protectiveness is kind of sweet.  Right now? Not so much.

“Oh, go ahead. I’ll be fine,” Daisy insists, a beat too late to be really believable.

“I’ve _met_ D. Winchester.  I could be useful,” I suggest.

“Or you could blow our cover.”

“Rube, come on!”

“I’ll stay with Daisy,” Roxy offers, and it’s so unexpected that we all stare at her.  “What?  I got the afternoon off: I go home, my dispatcher calls, I gotta go back to work.  He’ll never think to look for me here.”  As an explanation, it’s just self-serving enough that Daisy doesn’t protest.

Rube decides to follow her example.  “Fine, then, peanut.  Come on if you’re coming.”

§

I get stuck in the middle of the bench seat in Rube’s truck because I’ve got the shortest legs, but Rube has his _don’t-make-me-turn-this-car-around_ expression on, so I don’t complain.  It’s such an ancient truck that it has no AC: we drive with the windows open and that pretty much makes conversation impossible, anyway.

The Sunset Lodge ends up being on a back road on the less developed side of Fort Lawton, the part that didn’t make out too well when the hundred-year-old fort leased its property to a tourist attraction.  It’s kind of an overgrown bed-and-breakfast: a big old farmhouse with several unwieldy additions, all surrounded by a huge fence that's supporting half the plant life of the Northwest. 

Rube pulls over by what used to be the main entrance and is now a collage of DO NOT ENTER NO TRESSPASSING PRIVATE PROPERTY TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED signs.  He leaves the engine running, pops the hood, fiddles around with something, and in a minute, the truck is streaming thick black smoke.  Mason and I are banished while he arranged a few tools and some greasy rags around the cab.  We are ETD minus thirty. I lie down in the bed of the truck and watch the leaves of the overgrown oaks swaying against the July sky.

Mason sits on the tailgate and studies his post-it.  “I’ve been to Winchester, you know. To the cathedral.  Went on a trip when I was at school.”

“No, really?!”  I ask, lifting my head, eyes wide.  “ _You_ went to _school_?”

“Aww, shut up, you.  It was a very educational trip.”

“Let me guess—you snuck off and smoked pot behind the visitor’s center.”

“Behind one of the marquees on the lawn, actually.  Me and a few of my mates and a girl named Sally. Gorgeous fucking legs.”

I’m pretty sure no one’s been named Sally in the last half-century, and what the hell’s a lawn marquee?  “Sounds like a red-letter day,” I say dryly.

Mason shrugs, “Wasn’t bad,” but he’s gazing moonily into middle distance, like he can see a group of giggling high schoolers, high on freedom and THC, on a lawn straight out of Merchant-Ivory. I think about my field trips—interminable rounds of the Seattle Aquarium and the Woodland Park Zoo—and feel cheated.

“So,” I nudge his knee with my sneaker. “What’s so special about Winchester?” 

Mason looks thoughtful.  “Well, they’ve got a right big cathedral.”

“You don’t say?”

 He sticks his tongue out. “And it’s where they wrote the Book of Winchester.”

“Huh.”  I flick a leaf at him.  “You know, I probably could have guessed that, given the title.  What’s the Book of Winchester about?”

“It’s William the Conqueror’s record of all the land in England and who owned it,” Mason reports, and then looks a little surprised at himself. “How many mills and cows and ponds and whatnot.  I can’t believe I remember that.”

“Yeah,” I’m a little impressed myself, “I would’ve thought those braincells were long gone.”  It’s funny what you remember.

“The Doomsday Book,” Rube says from the front seat.

“Say what?”

“That’s what we call it in America.” 

“Oh, right.  I think I’ve heard that in England, too.”

“Doomsday like, you know, _doomsday_?”  I ask.  “Like the end of the world?”

“Medieval Christians believed there would be an accounting of all their deeds and possessions when the Second Coming occurred,” Rube explains, “how many mills and cows and ponds they owned, like Mason said.  You can see the similarity.”

“ _Is_ there an accounting?”  I roll over so I can see the back of Rube’s head through the cab window. He gets more information than he shows us on the post-its.  If there is some sort of celestial tabulation going on, Rube would be in on it.

“Not of mills and cows.”

Jesus, does he have to make _everything_ difficult?  “Well, I know that!  But of general wealth or number of good deeds or anything like that?”

I think for a split second that Rube’s going to give me a straight answer—which really _would_ precipitate the end of the world—but he just shrugs.  “What do you care peanut?  You’ve had your run.”

Asshole.  I turn my attention to Mason instead.  “Can you think of a musician with the name T. McMillan?”

Mason scrunches up his face to indicate thoughtfulness.  “No one I know…of course, might be outside my area of interest.  Classical oboeist or somesuch.  Opera. Big Band.”

"Pretty specific interests you've got there.”

“Hey, I know what I like.”

“Yeah…sex, drugs, rock’n’roll.”

“The holy trinity,” Mason agrees.

“Wow.  You are _so_ going to hell.”

“Might as well enjoy the ride,” he shoots back.

Rube clears his throat.  “Hate to interrupt the wit, but I believe we have an appointment to attend to. Peanut, make yourself scarce.”

I hop over the side of the truck and dash to hide among the mangy trees growing up the fence just as a car rounds the bend behind us.  Nice. It’s long and low and black; I know nothing about cars but, like Mason, I know what I like.

The car has one of those huge windshields, old enough to pre-date tinting, and I can see the driver and the passenger having a quick discussion about whether to stop.  Clearly they didn’t expect us to be here, out on a lonely two-lane highway leading to a closed service entrance.  They do stop, though, and I see Sam Winchester unfold himself from the passenger’s seat. He reaches back to open a door on the passenger’s side—ever the gentleman—and a tall girl with glasses steps out. The driver’s side isn’t visible from where I’m hiding, but I know the third person in the car must be Dean Winchester even before I see him walk around to retrieve a toolbox from the trunk.   I can hear snatches of conversation: Mason’s taken over the cover story—"it made this awful rattle- _bang_ and the smoke started"—and there’s not much that can shut Rube up, so I know my suspicion is true.  D. Winchester is not only alive and well, he is also B. Purkis.  Or possibly vice versa.

 §

My back is flat against the fence, so I’m standing in the overgrown shadow of the untended trees that are using it as a trellis.  It’s like standing outside at night and looking into a lit room.  I can see them—Mason nattering, Rube and the girl eying each other, silent and suspicious—but they can’t see me.  Sam’s nervously scanning the fence-line, though, and he didn’t get a good look at Mason this morning, but clearly _something_ is reminding him of strange things that go bump in the shrubbery. Dean’s hand sticks out from under the hood and makes impatient grabby motions until Sam finally stops staring and digs around in the toolbox instead.

Whatever tool Sam retrieves does the trick, because Rube’s truck stops making that throaty sound and settles down to being a normal internal-combustion vehicle.  In fact, it may actually sound better than it did before. Mason certainly thinks so: he’s overflowing with thanks, offering Dean a rag to wipe his hands on, gathering up spare tools.

Rube reaches through the truck window turn off the engine.  I can see him brush the girl’s shoulder as he passes, a surprisingly reddish flash as he snags her soul.  None of his usual chit-chat.  He wants this job over with; the little voice in my head says _told you so_.

“You take care of her, she’ll run forever,” I hear Dean say in the quiet that follows the ignition.

“Well, they don’t make ‘em like they did,” Rube says, and when he resorts to lame clichés like that, I get a little nervous.

“Can’t stand a compact car, myself.  I mean, what’s the point?”  Dean holds out a hand for the toolbox that currently looks like it’s going to pull Mason’s arm from his socket.  “I’ll take that.”

“I’ve got it, mate.  Least I can do.”

“No, really.”

“S’orright.  Just put it in the boot, yeah?” Mason goes to duck between Dean and the truck and Dean’s arm shoots out to block his way.

“I said, no,” Dean says again. “I’ll take it.” He’s facing away from me, so all I can see is the set of his shoulders under the flannel shirt (who the hell wears flannel in July?) but I can tell from his voice: he’s not angry, not anxious, just damn sure that no one is moving that toolbox anywhere without his explicit say.

“Got something in the boot then? Anything worth sharing?”  Mason jokes with a salacious wink.

Sam takes a step forward, boxing Mason in, and my fellow reaper’s always been a skinny bastard but suddenly he looks small. Suddenly, everything is tense: we’re no longer on highway 34 out by the old Sunset Lodge.  We’re at the O-K Corral and it’s high noon.  

Mason, for all his other failings and despite an unfortunate lapse in 1966, has an excellent sense of self-preservation.  He holds out the toolbox.  “Sorry, mate.  Just joking about the…anyway, uh, no harm done, yeah?”

Dean takes the toolbox, his hand brushing Mason’s and darting back as though he’s gotten an electric shock.  His soul flares, just like it did with Daisy.  He reaches for the handle again. “No harm at all.  Mate.”

Dean goes to stow the toolbox in the bo—uh, trunk. Sam suggests that Rube leave first.  "We’ll see you off, just make sure things are really fixed, you know.”  

Rube agrees absently, his eyes still on Dean, and says something about Good Samaritans.

“Glad to help,” Dean saunters back over with a big grin, like the Incident with the Toolbox had never happened.  “Only pass this way but once, and all that.”

Rube looks at him, surprised, like after all that staring, he finally _sees_ D.  Winchester.  “True enough,” he replies, and it’s not until he actually gets into the truck that I realize my conundrum.  I can hardly dash out to join them— _Hey, wait for me!  Oh, Sam, Dean, nice seeing you.  Daisy says hi and that she hopes your death sticks this time!_  Rube’ll have to pull off the road somewhere ahead, wait for the Winchesters to leave, and then come back for me.  Damn!  This was _so_ not how I was planning on spending my afternoon.  My sweaty t-shirt is sticking to my back.  I wonder if it’s possible to get poison ivy when you’re already dead.

Mason gets into the passenger’s seat and, like some parody of a family vacation ( _y’all come back now_ ), Dean, Sam, and the girl wave them off.  

“Drive safely,” the girl says.  It’s the first thing I’ve heard her say, and she puts an odd pause between the words, like she doesn’t quite mean it the way it sounds.

“Cheerio, mate!”  Dean calls after the truck, “Pip pip!”

“ _Pip pip_?” Sam looks dubious.

“Saw it on an English TV show once.  PBS.” Dean explains.

“Seriously?”

“Hey, man, we were in Utah.  Motel didn’t have PayPerView.”

Sam just shakes his head and turns his attention to the fence.  “Up and over,” he says.  “Ladies first.”

The girl—who must be T. McMillian, I realize, remembering the flamelike burst of her soul when Rube touched her—takes a step forward, but Sam’s huge hand closes on her shoulder.  He nods towards Dean.

“Not you.  Him.”

“Yeah, not that we don’t trust you, sweetheart,” Dean says, finding a relatively clear area of fence and digging the toes of his boots into the chain-link as he swings himself up, “it’s just that—well, we really don’t trust you.”

Dean reaches the top of the fence and braces himself there.  “I’m king of the world!”  he shouts, and there’s a rather satisfying echo as the sound bounces off the Sunset Lodge façade.

“Swear to God, Dean, move your ass or I’m sending her up after you,” Sam grouses, but he’s smiling.  I notice that he still hasn’t let go of the girl.  

“Whatever, dude.” Dean begins climbing down the other side.  “And you should be careful with that _ladies first_ shit.  See if I’m still around to catch you on this side.”  There’s a grunt, a bitten-off curse, and the fence snaps against my back as Dean tumbles off.

“Dean?—Dean?!”  The panic in Sam’s voice is a little out of proportion to the fall, which couldn’t have been more than six feet.

“Yeah, yeah.  I’m fine.” Dean’s voice, winded, comes over the fence. “There’s this, like—does kudzu grow this far north?—all tangled up the bottom half…Terry, sweetheart? Come on over.  Don’t try anything; wouldn’t want you to _fall._ ”   

“Everything good?”

“Yeah, Sammy, we’re good.  Anytime you’d care to join us…” Dean calls back.  

“Jerk,” Sam mutters. 

“I heard that, bitch!”

Sam jogs over to the car, retrieves a duffle bag from the backseat, and chucks it over the fence before climbing after it.  Against my back, I can feel the chainlink swaying under his weight.  There’s a thump as he jumps to the ground on the other side, and all of a sudden, I’m alone on my side of the fence.  I step out of the trees, pulling leaves out of my hair, and wander over to the car.  Chevrolet Impala, according to the bumper. Peering through the windows, I see a map, some fast food wrappers, a box of salt with the Morton’s girl (like there’s not enough sodium in a Big Mac?).  Sam’s _Spoon River_ is spread-eagled on the dashboard.  Thinking of Mason, I try the trunk: locked.  I notice the Kansas plates and remember playing license plate bingo with Reggie on drives down to the lake.  “Long way from home,” dad would always say when we saw a car from a distant state. 

"Long way from home," I tell the empty car.

I head back to the fence.  It’s probably about ten feet high, maybe a little more.  I follow it down the road, waiting for Rube.  It’s almost 3:15.  No Rube.  I walk back to the car.  I hear a high-pitched chittering and jump when something darts past my foot.  Gravelings, sounding like a swarm of demented squirrels or rabid monkeys.  They’re pulling at a section of the fence, close to the ground, peeling the links away from the support posts.  Of course, they could climb, but gravelings like to destroy stuff if at all possible.  They disappear under the fence; one of them stops to chuck acorns at me.  

“Bastard!”  I pounce, but it darts through the hole in the fencing.  I peer through the gap into an overgrown savanna of straw-dry grass and mysterious lumps that might be abandoned lawn furniture.  The Sunset Lodge lawn is, like, _The Secret Garden_ meets _Alice in Wonderland_. You could get lost in there, and no one would know where to even begin looking. 

Forget it.  No way in hell.  I’m _not_ following the graveling who followed the doomed boy who followed his good-as-dead brother.   _Who swallowed the fly; I don’t know why—perhaps,_ croons a little voice in my head, _perhaps he’ll die_.

The abandoned hotel is silent; even the gravelings have gone quiet.

 

_[One more chapter...to be posted tomorrow]_


	2. Chapter 2

**There is a land of the living and a land of the dead  
and the bridge is love **

 

 

The gravelings have left a swath of brittle, brown grass cutting through the otherwise lushly overgrown lawn.  I follow it to the front porch. Whoever decided to remake the hotel as a haunted house missed the memo on the Pacific Northwest real estate market: somebody has this property sealed up tight and weatherproofed out the wazoo, waiting for the day it’ll make him rich.  There’s a boxy realtor’s lock on the front door and all the windows are neatly boarded up and sealed with plastic.  I circle around the side, looking for a way in, but the best I find is a first floor window where squirrels or something have chewed through the corner of the board.  
  
Getting through the crazy tangle of untended bushes is a job of work: I’m sweaty and scratched by the time I get close enough to the building to pry the board loose.  It splinters in my hand and I revise my estimate of how long the hotel has been sitting here, empty.  Or not: there’s a face staring at me through the glass and I shriek before recognizing it as my own.  Or rather, not my face, but the face that is mine now.  Obviously, I can’t go walking around looking like George Lass, better known as _Local Girl Dies in Freak Accident, Story on Page A4_. What if I run into someone who knew me when? No, the undead me has a whole new look—and, to be honest, that look leaves a little to be desired.  I stare at the girl reflected in the window: I wrinkle my nose; she wrinkles hers. I wave my left hand.  The girl’s right hand floats into view and waves back. We glare at each other.  I didn’t have a mirror in the house until Daisy moved in and insisted; I still avoid them whenever possible.  It’s just too weird.  Rube says the New Me is a temporary condition.  As time passes and the world ages around me and _Local Girl_ becomes just a fuzzy photo in the newspaper recycling bin, I’ll start to look more like I used to.  Rube claims to be a dead ringer for his own corpse.  Daisy looks enough like herself that she’s occasionally recognized by octogenarian fans. Mason and Roxy and I, though, we’re still stuck with our doppelgangers.  I wink at my reflection; she winks and blows a sweaty strand of hair out of her eyes.  On one hand, I miss my face.  On the other, I’ll wear this one for as long as I can: the day I look like _me_ again is the day there’s no one left who remembers the way I was. 

Something goes flying past my shoulder and, suddenly, the girl in the window has a crack splitting her forehead.  I spin around and see one of the gravelings crouched in the grass, winding up to throw another roof tile at me.

  
“You little _punk_!”  I hurl the piece of board that’s still in my hand and miss by a mile. The graveling skitters toward the corner of the hotel, sticks its thumbs in its ears and waggles its fingers.

  
I chase after it, rounding the building.  The land back here is terraced; I go right over the edge of one terrace and land on my hands and knees.  “Scrawny fucker.  Goddamn little…” I dig through the underbrush, find a stone and chuck it after the graveling. He dodges it and sticks his tongue out.  Then there are two of them, jeering and making faces.  Then three.  There’s a fucking graveling _convention_ at the edge of the property where the stone walls of the terraces give way to a large, ramshackle gazebo.  Must be an underground stream down there or something: half of the gazebo’s foundation is sunk into the ground.  The latticed walls on that side buckle and bulge, propped up by a group of ancient support beams that the gravelings are using like a jungle-gym.  Over the sound of their chittering, I can hear something else— _someone_ else.  The words don’t sound like English, but I’d bet my life (it’s an expression) that I’ve located the Winchesters.

Jumping down to the next level of the terrace, I keep an eye on my graveling—the one with the raggedy tail. I am hot, tired, sweaty, bruised, and _fucking sick_ of having things thrown at me; that bastard is getting what’s coming to it.  A group of gravelings have gathered by one sunken wall, passing something back and forth like a hot potato: _I dare you.  No—you do it!  I_ double _dare you!_   I catch a glimpse, a gleam in the sun.  It’s a cigarette lighter, one of those heavy-duty metal ones that you have to refill with lighter fluid.  My graveling suddenly darts into the group, snatches the lighter, and swings itself up onto one of the support beams.

Gravelings are the little bastards that make fatal accidents happen and this, I realize, is how thing are gonna go down.  D. Winchester and T. McMillan, burnt alive.  It’s a particularly nasty death and even if Dean had it coming (and coming and coming), I can’t help but think about the girl.  God, she’s probably only a few years younger than me and Sam.

Sam.  As soon as I think his name, I recognize that it’s his voice I’ve been hearing from inside—chanting just barely audible over the gravelings and their racket.  Sam doesn’t have an appointment until this evening: his soul is still in his body.  And that body is in a tumble-down glorified shack that is about to catch fire.  I wonder if he’s meant to escape, somehow, and survive until this evening.  I wouldn’t count on it: the Winchesters seem to have royally screwed up the standard timeline and the gravelings are definitely the chaos-now-questions-later type.

My graveling seems to know just what I’m thinking.  It positively _sneers_ at me from its perch on the beam; then it grabs a clump of moldy leaves from the gazebo’s gutter and flings it at me.  Before I can duck, I’ve got rotten leaves all over my t-shirt, clammy and smelly and that.  Is. _So. Fucking._ _It!_ The _last_ goddamned straw that cripples the fucking camel!  I grab a big, flat rock from the terrace wall behind me and send it spinning at the ugly motherfucker like a discus.  

In the moment before my improvised weapon hits the support beam, I realize that's what the gravelings wanted all along. 

Too late: the stone smashes through the beam, which tumbles into its neighbor, starting a chain reaction that’s helped along by the gravelings swinging from the eaves and capering on the decrepit roof.  The wall crumbles—joists cracking, studs ripping, shingles splitting—and the roof collapses in on itself in a cloud of damp-rot and decomposing wood.

Somebody screams. 

It isn’t me: I’m on the ground, face-planted in the grass, though I don’t remember ducking.  There are splinters of wood in my hair.  I pick myself up gingerly. The gravelings are gone and, since they’ve scared away all the birds and squirrels, the clearing is…well, dead silent, if you’ll pardon the adjective.  Until—

“Son of a _bitch_!” someone grunts and shoves aside what used to be a screen window.  I find myself staring at Dean Winchester, sun-blinded and bleeding from the head, for an instant before I have the sense to dodge behind a section of roof. 

“Hey!” he shouts after me.  I hear boots stumbling toward me through the wreckage of the gazebo.

There’s a groan from somewhere to my left and the footsteps stop.

“Sam?  Sammy?!  _Sam._   Answer me, Sam!”

“Dude,” Sam croaks, “Stop. Yelling.”

 §

I’m sure there’s a touching reunion scene, but I don’t see it.  I’m too busy looking at a piece of debris that is definitely _not_ part of the original Sunset Hotel layout. The body formerly known as T. McMillan is seated in an age-worn Adirondack chair, pinned under a post carved like a Grecian column.  Doing what I do, I’m not surprised to note that her neck is at an angle rarely seen in the living.  What does surprise me are her wrists.  They’re bound to the arms of the chair.  Her ankles are tied to each other.  Jesus Christ.  I’m suddenly freezing cold despite the July heat. What have I gotten myself into?

I can hear the creak and splinter of Sam and Dean shambling through the ruined wood, stumbling and cursing, but I can’t seem to make myself move.  _What’s the worst they can do to you? You’re already dead,_ I tell myself.  Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel better. Sam weaves into my field of vision. His left shoulder is a dislocated lump under his t-shirt and he’s kicking through the rubble, looking for something. Dean limps after him, one leg of his jeans bloody from the knee down.  He studies the ground, too, but occasionally he glances up and around.  I wonder if he’s looking for me. 

I tuck myself further into a little cave made when the roof folded over one of the broken walls.  My elbow brushes something cold, and I find my cave already has an occupant: the undead T. McMillan.

“Uh. Hi,” I whisper, for lack of anything else to say. I’m oddly relieved to see that, besides a gash on her forearm and a split lip that’s dribbling blood down her chin, Terry looks unmarked.  That means most of the physical damage to her body occurred when the roof fell in and killed her.  Whatever it is she and the family Winchester were up to, it wasn’t some kind of crazy bondage kink. 

She blinks at me and I’m surprised to find that her eyes are blue.  Could've sworn they were darker when she looked at me before.  “I’m so… _tired_ ,” she whimpers.

Christ, she sounds just like Reggie at the end of the long drive home from the lake.  So when her head drops onto my shoulder, I don’t shrug it off.  Instead, I pat her awkwardly on the back.  “I know you are, sweetheart; I know.  We’re almost home.”  That’s exactly what my mom used to say, and it always seemed to work.

One of her hands creeps over to rest in mine.  I see bruises on her wrist from the rope. Pre-mortem. There’s this common misconception that a person is restored to perfect health after death: the blind see, the lame dance, great-uncle Fred’s teeth are returned unto him.  Now, I can’t say what happens _beyond_ —though, in my personal opinion, a rumor that persistent must have some truth—but reaping a soul only spares it the indignities of the actual death.  Your trick knee, your bad eyes, your broken heart, the toe you stubbed just before that falling piano ushered you out of this vale of tears?  Those things still imprint, because the soul isn’t _gone_ until…well, until it is, in that very last moment.  And then you die.  
  
“Dude!” I hear Dean call, “Found my lighter!”

“Didn’t know it was missing,”  Sam replies, and even his voice sounds pained. 

 Dean must notice, too.  “You, uh, want me to snap that back in?” he asks.

“Nah.  Wait ‘til the swelling goes down a little.” 

“Suit yourself,” Dean pants as he clambers over a piece of the fallen roof.  The thought that they’re talking about Sam’s _shoulder_ makes me feel sick.  You think I’d be over that kind of squeamishness, doing what I do for a living, but it’s actually gotten worse.  No, seriously, be _careful_ , I want to tell people when I see them fiddling with hangnails, ignoring papercuts, soldiering along despite bad backs and tennis elbow. People are just so Goddamn   _fragile_ —literally skin and bone—and they have no fucking idea. 

Dean wanders past, closer this time. Close enough that when I peek up through the roof of my little cave, I can make out finger-shaped bruises on his neck, between the line of his collar and the cord of some sort of necklace.  I hold my breath and think about Sam Winchester’s huge hands and the rope binding Terry’s wrists.  I don't know.  I don't want to know.  Curious George has met her match.

He ducks to the right and I can hear him shifting fallen sections of the wall.

“Got it,” he announces, and he reappears holding the battered notebook Daisy had found in his bag this morning. “Now, waddaya say we get the hell out of hotel California?”

“Main-stream music, Dean?  How badly did you hit your head?” I can see Sam clearly from where I’m babysitting Dead Girl.  He looks nearly as done-in as she does: it takes physical effort for him to tease his brother and for a moment I’m not sure he’s going to be able to move from where he’s leaning.  He does, though, and careens over to Terry’s body.

 “Dude, sometime before Christmas? Don’t make me come in there and haul your ass out,” Dean calls, in that tone of impatient concern that older siblings inherit from their parents.

         “Calm down, I’m coming,” Sam replies, and then, quieter, “You’re the one who just had to do this _one last_ case. Stupid holy well, wrecking the foundation...”   If Dean can hear that, he doesn’t respond. Sam puts out a hand, like he’s going to lay it on Terry’s head.  It hovers for a moment and then he says something I can’t quite catch.

 Next to me, Terry sighs and shifts as Sam crunches his way out of the gazebo. “So, now what?” she asks.

“Now we wait,” I say.

“For what?”

 “Godot.”  I can’t remember reading that in high school, but then, there’s a lot I’ve forgotten about high school.

 “Huh?”

“I said, I don’t know.”

“Well, I can’t just stay _here_.”  Over-tired.  That’s the word my mother used: _Reggie, I know you don’t mean that tone.  You’re just     over-tired._

 “No, no, I mean, something will happen to tell you where to go next.  We’ll know it when it happens.”

 She tenses beside me.  “Like…heaven or hell?”

 “Sort of like—a gateway.  It looks different for everyone, and I really don’t know where it goes exactly.”  The Winchesters are out of sight now. I want to catch up with them, see where they go now, but Terry’s head is heavy on my shoulder.  “Maybe everybody goes to the same place, in the end.  Except, like, Hitler and Charles Manson and people like that.  Nobody wants to spend eternity with _them_.  But, you know, everything else?  Like…grandparents, and pets you had when you were little. You know what I think?”

“Mmm?” Terry’s nearly asleep.  I could switch to _once upon a time_ , now, and she wouldn’t notice.

“I think, in the end, all the little things, they cancel out.  It doesn’t matter how many mills or ponds you had when you were alive, how many times you drank your roommate’s milk instead of buying your own, how many white lies. Things are counted differently, there.  You get to start over again.”

Terry mumbles something, might be “that’s nice" or "how nice."  I’m not saying it to be nice: I just can't imagine anyone cares as much about our little sins as we do. I don’t know how to explain that, and in the end, I don’t have time anyway. The air is already changing, shimmering blue and silver, reforming itself into a room that hovers about four feet above the ground.  A bed beneath a window, and through the window, I can see stars. “Terry?  It’s time to—” what? wake up?  go back to sleep? 

Before I can finish the sentence, she’s already walking to the room, pulling the covers from the bed, wrapping herself tightly.

“G’night, George,” Terry says sleepily.

“How did you know m—” The room dissolves into a broken wall looking out over an overgrown lawn.  I can’t see the Winchesters, or hear the gravelings; there’s only the dead girl.  Well, two dead girls, counting me.

 §

          I suddenly really, _really_ do not want to be here alone any more.  I jog back around the house, toward the fence, and stop short when I see the Winchesters are still there.  Of course, they’re not exactly in jogging form.  It’s taken them about ten minutes to limp their way this far and now they’re confronted by the fence—can’t go out the way they came. I check my watch: 4:00 and all is well, except that D. Winchester is _still fucking alive_.  The post-it note with my assignment is still in my pocket, along with three of the rocks I’d planned on throwing at the gravelings.  I’m not supposed to interfere until much closer to the ETD, but Dean Winchester seems to be no respecter of schedules, so what the hell?  Rapidfire, I chuck the rocks at corner of the fence, right where the gravelings tore their hole, and then duck down into the tall grass.

         I can’t see the Winchesters and, apparently, they can’t see me, but Dean must investigate the rustling made by my flying stones, because he shouts back to Sam: “Dude.  There’s a hole in this fence!”

         “How come we didn’t see this coming in?” Sam ask, skeptical.

         Dean’s willing to take his luck where he finds it (a policy which, I must say, seems to be working well so far). “Hey, baby! D’ja miss us?”  he calls and I hear the _skrreek_ of metal as he bends the chainlinks back. I wonder who he’s talking to—there’s nothing out there but the car. 

         After some shuffling—“Here, no, don’t move your arm.  You’re making it worse! I’ll hold the fence back.  You just kind of…duck.  Anyone ever told you you’re too damn tall?”—Dean manages to navigate Sam through the fence.  I wait until I hear the sound of their car pulling away before creeping through myself.   

  §

        “You just missed ‘em,” I say laconically when Rube pulls up. “They went thattaway!”  I’ve spent a half-hour thinking up that line, while waiting for him or Mason to come find me, and I’m a little disappointed when my wit gets nothing more than a string of curses. 

         Roxy pulls up behind him in my car; Daisy and Mason are fighting over the radio, which cheers me up a little.  Apparently there are some constants in the world, even if death is no longer one of them.

         “Yoohoo!  Georgia!” 

         “ _Yoohoo_ ,” I mimic, “ _Daisy!_ ”

         “I brought _sandwiches_!”  my housemate declares, waving a plastic bag of foil-wrapped shapes like it's the loot from her latest heist.

        “Red-letter day,” I remark flatly, but it kind of is, considering how rarely Daisy cooks. I leave Rube to his cursing, climb into the backseat, and unwrap one.  Egg salad.  I briefly weigh the very real possibility of salmonella against the fact that I haven’t eaten anything since Kiffany’s oatmeal this morning. 

         “What now?” I ask, picking slivers of egg shell out of my mouth.

         “Well, _you_ have an appointment, don’t you?”  Roxy replies.

         I snort. “Like _that_ means anything.”

         Roxy rolls her eyes. “You mean that boy still _ain’t_ dead?”

         I shake my head  
  
        “You know what they say," Daisy chirps, "third time’s lucky."

        “Technically, this is his _fourth_ time.  If you count the fake name.” Roxy’s tone makes it clear that she is, in fact, going to hold that fake name against D. Winchester.

         “Do you know where that came from?”  Mason asks suddenly.

         I study the sandwich in my hand.  “The…kitchen?”  With Daisy, you can never be sure.

         Mason looks puzzled.  “Wha’?...No, I mean, why people say the third time is lucky.”

         "Oh. Uh. No. Do you?”

         Mason settles back with his box of tissues like he was just waiting for someone to ask. “Was a man, name of John Lee, kilt a woman in Cornwall and was sentenced to hang.   They tried to hang him, three times, they did—the government, I mean, the Man—but he never would die.  So after the third time, they gave up.”  Mason shrugs.  “He lived another fifty years.”

         “That’s nonsense,” Daisy sniffed.  “ _Third time…_ it has to do with the trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

         “Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll,” I add, and Daisy shoots me a dirty look. 

         Mason opens his mouth to argue his interpretation, but Roxy beats him to it.  “Oh, get on, you two.  Get your asses out of my car.”

         “ _Your_ car?”  I interject.

          “I’m driving it, ain’t I?”

         “Not for long,” I say.  “Just let me check something with Rube.”

  §

        Rube is still sitting in the truck, staring out over the steering wheel.  I rap on the side window until he leans over and rolls it down.

        “I’m leaving for my appointment,” I say.

         “Good for you, peanut.”

        I wait.  “The girl—T. McMillan—she, uh, got off all right. On time, I mean.”  That makes it sound like she caught her damn flight…which actually isn’t such a terrible metaphor. 

         “Glad to hear it,” Rube replies.  He doesn't _sound_ glad.  He doesn't sound _anything._

        “Hey!” I snap.

         Rube just looks at me with a raised eyebrow.

         “What the hell is going on here?  I mean, should I even _bother_ reaping this soul?  Maybe I should just take the fucking night off, huh?”

         “Of course you should ‘bother’.” Somehow, I'm not bowled over by the conviction in his voice.

         “Why?  This guy seems pretty damn untouchable.  Give me one good reason.”

        Rube looks at me for a long minute, then reaches over and taps my nose. “Because _you_ have an appointment. There’s your reason, peanut.”  As a reason, it sucks, but at least he’s looking at me. 

          “Rube?”

          “Mmm?”

        “What do you think is going on?”

         He shrugs.  “You figure it out, you come tell me, peanut.  Then we’ll both know.”

         “Great.” I retort. “That was _so_ helpful.  Any last pieces of advice you want to pass on before Roxy and I hit the road?”

         Rube turns the key in the ignition, getting ready to move the truck so I can pull my car around.  “Cowards,” he says over the noise of the engine.  “Cowards die many times before their deaths.  The valiant never taste of death but once.”

         “Oh, let me guess: _Waiting for Godot_?” I say, even though I actually remember that quote from senior English.  Rube likes to correct me: playing dumb is the least I can do  _Look out for each other_ , he said.

         “ _Julius Caesar_ and, Goddamnit, peanut, what are they teaching you children these days?” He turns away to adjust the rearview mirror, but I think he might be smiling.

         I jog back to my car.  Roxy has evicted Mason, who is chasing Daisy, his companion-in-exile, around the parked car and threatening her with a snotty tissue.  Evidently, the pair of them have a cumulative age of _nine._

         “Rube’s waiting,” I tell them and get into the driver’s seat. Next to me, Roxy just shakes her head.

         “Drop me off at that chicken and biscuits place on highway nine,” she instructs as we pull away.  “My appointment’s not ‘til nearly eight and I can catch a bus there, take me right up to the park.”

         I scootch my ass off the seat to retrieve the post-it from my pocket.  “Mine’s on Patmos Road….where the hell is that?”

         “It’s that stretch off the Culpepper junction,” Roxy informs me, and I try not to be impressed.  She and Rube can spend whole hours trying to think up locations that the other person can’t identify. Which is…kind of lame, actually, but when you’ve got eternity to fill, every little bit helps.

         “Do you think it'll work this time?”  I ask.

        “No.”

         There’s not much to say after that, so I don’t say anything.  When I turn onto highway nine, though, I ask about something that’s been on my mind for a while now.

         “Roxy, you ever heard that Chinese proverb, fortune, whatever, that says if you save a man’s life, you’re responsible for him forever?”  
  
        “Oooh, I can’t eat Chinese,” Roxy say.  “Gives me gas.”

         I wait for a second to see if that remark will make more sense given time.  It doesn’t . “What does that have to do with anything?”

         “Well, if I can’t eat Chinese, how am I going to read those little fortune things in the cookies, college girl?”  Roxy replies. One semester of college and I've earned Roxy's enmity forever.  Thank God I didn't graduate!

         “I didn’t _say_ it was from a fortune cookie.  I—don’t know where it’s from actually. I just want to know if you’ve heard of it.  If you thought maybe it works that way with souls: I reap a soul, I’m responsible for it?”

         “Don’t make sense, anyway.” Roxy dismisses.  “I save somebody’s life, he’s gonna be owing _me_.  A lot.  Like my-wish-is-your-fucking-command a lot.”

         “Ok,” I pull into the chicken place to let her out.  “Good.”  Because, I’ve decided, whatever happens at this appointment, I do _not_ want to be responsible for Dean Winchester’s immortal soul.

 

**D.** **Winchester**   
Sunset Lodge  
E.T.D. **3:34 PM**

~~~~**T. McMillan**  
 **Sunset Lodge**  
 **E.T.D.** **3: 36 PM  
**

§

**D. Winchester**   
**Patmos Road  
E.T.D.  6: 14 PM**

Granted, D. Winchester’s post-it _says_ Patmos Road, but I’m still surprised to find it’s just that: a road.  A utility road that runs parallel to the highway for a while, and then sort of wanders away from civilization.  The fields on either side belong to Puget Sound Power  & Light, according to the occasional billboard.  There are stands of trees and, every few miles, a row of towers and electrical wires, and not much else.  It’s so bland and unpopulated that I have to remind myself it was just five minutes ago I dropped Ruby off at the Wing Joint.  I’m so busy scanning the horizon for places Dean Winchester might meet his end that I actually drive past the man himself. 

He’s walking along on the opposite side of the road, the discarded flannel overshirt tucked into the back pocket of his jeans and trailing behind him like a tail.  Just walking along, watching his own boots kick through the undergrowth.  I pull over, put the convertible in reverse, roll back to catch up with him before I’ve thought of a good reason to explain why I’m here, so there’s a moment where we just stare at each other. 

And then he grins.  “Hey! It’s the pretty girl in the gorgeous car…Or should I swap those adjectives if I want a ride?”

“Where’s your brother?”  I ask.

Dean looks a little puzzled, and I realize I was supposed to say something flirty back.  Oh, well.  It was such a bad line, he should be _glad_ that I’m ignoring it. 

“Sam’s catching up on his beauty sleep,” Dean says, and then shoots back: “Where’s your sister?”

I’m about to ask how they hell he knows about my sister when I realize that he means Daisy.  “Pretty much the same. She had a rough morning.” 

There’s another moment of silence, broken by the _whoosha_ of a passing station wagon.   

“So, are we gonna play Twenty Questions, or are you gonna offer me a ride?”  Dean asks.

I lean over and pop the lock on the passenger’s side door, watch as he strides around the front of the car and lets himself in.  I’ve got my eye on the rearview mirror—should I pull out in front of the car that’s coming down the road behind me, or wait until it passes?—and next thing I know, something is splashing all over my right arm.

“Fuck!”  I yelp and take my eyes off the road to look at the spreading wet patches on my shirt.  It’s _cold._

“Sorry!” Dean leans over to pick up the silver flask that has tumbled to the floor of the car.  “It’s just water—it won’t stain.  Fell out of my pocket,” he says, tucking it back into the pocket of his flannel shirt and sticking the whole bundle into the footwell.  I’m pretty sure an uncapped flask of water didn’t just happen to fall out of his pocket, but Dean’s smirk is just daring me to call him a liar and I won’t give him the satisfaction.

“Just water,” I say, “I’ll live.” 

I turn, bracing my right hand behind the passenger’s seat, looking over my shoulder as I reverse the car back onto the main road.  It’s a textbook maneuver—I remember Dad in the parking lot out at the university, teaching me for my learner’s permit—but this time, I let my fingers brush across Dean’s shoulder where it touches the passenger’s seat. I see the flash of his soul out of the corner of my eye, and now it’s his turn to flinch.

“What?”  I ask, innocently.

“Nothing.  Just—cold fingers.”

I smile at the empty road ahead of us.  “I’ve got poor circulation.”

“So,”  Dean asks after a minute of fidgeting—playing with the seatbelt, fingers drumming on the dashboard, an aborted reach for the radio dial before he realizes this is not his car—“where are you headed?”

This is the kind of going-my-way? conversation that people usually have _before_ they pick up hitchhikers, and I realize that neither of us believe for a minute that things are as simple as running into a passing acquaintance who offers you a ride.  “Oh, just—out for a drive,” I say, nonchalant, and then, pressing my luck: “ _Such_ a coincidence meeting you out here.”   

Dean’s fingers keep running along the seam of the window, but I can sense something change.  The wind is picking up—rain this afternoon, maybe—and I’ve got the top down.  He has to speak up to be heard.  “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

I glance over at him innocently.  “Maybe you should start.”

He squints at me for a minute, and then smiles.  “Maybe I should.”

Dean relaxes after that, less fidgeting, reaches over to turn on the radio and then starts suggesting possible repairs when I tell him it doesn’t work. He’s in the middle of explaining something about a tinsel lead—I’m not really listening—when abruptly he looks out at the passing countryside and says, “Hold up.  This is my stop.” 

“Here?”  I ask.  There’s nothing out here. A little spur of road behind a windbreak of trees, some cellphone towers in the distance.  I haven’t even seen another car for ten minutes.  “Where are you going, anyway?”

He stops scanning the trees and turns to look at me with an odd little smile. “I don’t know.”

Uh, okay. “So—why here?”

“I…promised to meet someone here.”

“Kind of—an appointment?”

“Yeah,” he looks relieved to be given the word.  “Exactly.  An _appointment_.”

“Oh.  Okay, then.”  I’ve got no reason to keep him, can’t even come up with a good excuse, but suddenly, I wish I could.  I don’t want Dean Winchester to go to this final appointment.  I want to drive him back to wherever he’s staying, let Sam hand him tools while he fixes the broken radio in my car and flirts with Daisy.  Just let him live his life. 

I smooth my hand over the pocket where I’m keeping his post-it.  It’s not up to me. “Hey, do you know what time it is?”  I ask, just to keep him a little longer.

He glances automatically at the pale line on his wrist.  “Nope, sorry.  I, uh, forgot my watch.” 

The watch is gone.  So is the cord of the necklace that I’d noticed back at the old hotel.  There was a ring, too, this morning, that Dean’s not wearing anymore. He’s _forgotten_ a lot.  It’s almost as if he knows where he’s going.  _Mills and cows and ponds_ , I think to myself.  You can’t take it with you.

“Anyway, thanks for the ride,” he says.  “Say hi to your sister from me.  And drive careful,” he nods towards the sky.  “Looks like rain.”

“Right,” I want to say, “be careful,”  by my mouth is dry, so I simply nod.  Nod and watch as he strolls down the empty road, looks both ways, crosses over toward the line of trees, passes beyond them and out of sight. 

I pull the post-it out of my pocket, check my own watch.  Right on time.  I notice that Dean's flannel shirt is still stuffed into the passenger side footwell, and for some reason, that strikes me as hysterical.  Well, he might not be needing it any more—and then again, maybe he will.  Who knows?  I hold the post-it between my first two fingers as I dangle my arm out the window, let the wind pull at it.  One-handed I put the car into gear, pull a U-turn, and head back down Patmos Road. 

§

While I wasn’t paying attention, the afternoon had liquefied into that weird yellow-ish halflight that comes before summer storms.  I let the wind tug the post-it from my hand, watch it spiral away.  It’s picking up, the wind, smelling like ozone, tearing through the branches of the windbreaks on either side.  Leaves and twigs and what seems like half the field comes with it.  I don’t know where all the grit is coming from, it’s like being in a goddamn sandstorm.  Yeah, yeah, global warming, it’s been a dry summer, but still.  This is fucking ridiculous. 

I can hear tiny pebbles _ping_ ing off the windshield.  A few fat raindrops spatter on the dashboard as I pull over.  Then more, faster, threatening to become a flood.  It’s a struggle to get the top up—the wind tries to turn it into a sail—and there are _clouds_ of topsoil blowing across the road. The dirt gets in my eyes, my nose, I can taste it; by the time I get the top up and clamber back behind the wheel, there’s a fine coating of dust on everything, including me.

Thunder cracks sharply, loud enough to make my ears ring even in the car.  _Jesus_ , the storm must be passing right overhead for it to be that loud, and it’s been years since I was afraid of thunder, but my heart is pounding now.  It’s Pavlovian, I bet: you hear thunder and you automatically dash for cover, even though you know rain is just water.  It can’t hurt you.  An image of the Wicked Witch of the East pops into my head: _melting, I’m melting…_ Ok, well, as long as you’re not evil, water can’t hurt you. _Just water.  I’ll live_.

Another smattering of raindrops, sounds like someone’s throwing stones at the car.  I crane my neck to see the sky through the windshield: it’s dark with gray, rainswollen clouds.  I wait for the lightning, remembering how Reggie and I used to sit out on the porch at the lake house and count the beats between the lightning and the thunder.  Was there lightning before? I can’t remember—if the storm is as close as it sounds, I should have seen the flash before that thunder. Light travels faster than sound; you can have heat lightning without thunder; can you have thunder without lightning?

I look through the back window, but the road is empty all the way to the thrashing branches of the treeline.  Just as I turn away, the lightning strikes: the reflection of it in the rearview mirror blinds me for a second. Automatically, I start counting: _one Mississippi, two Mississippi._ At eight Mississippi, the air starts to smell charred; the lightning must have struck one of the trees.  I open my eyes to see if it’s still burning and find that the sun has already struggled through the clouds to my left.  I roll down a window and stick my hand out: rain’s gone, wind’s died down to an occasional gentle puff. 

Crazy fucking Northwestern weather. My palms feel gross when I put them on the wheel—sweat and grit from putting up the top—and leave grime marks when I wipe them on my jeans. Yuck.  I ruin more clothes on this job! The engine growls and sputters and finally turns; I drive back to look for Dean, wondering if he was hit by lightning.  Technically, we don’t do Act-of-God type stuff; that’s the province of a cell in Laurelhurst.  But I doubt there’s anything about Dean Winchester’s death that would surprise me now, other than it actually happening. 

I take a left at the stand of trees, turn onto the unpaved spur that leads out toward the cell towers.  Smaller tracks cross the main road and, as I pass first one and then a second, seeing nothing but a few broken branches, I begin to think—holy resurrection, Batman, he’s done it again!   Fate’s taken a rain-check; Dean Winchester lives to fight another day. And then I come over a slight rise and see the body lying in the middle of the road, dark against the packed dirt: boots to the south, head to the north, arms thrown out to align with the crossroad on either side. 

I park the car, get out, and walk over, half expecting him to jump up and yell “boo!” 

I’ve seen more than my share of dead people in the last few years, and one thing holds true for them all: they _never_ look like they’re sleeping.  At least, not until the funeral homes get to them. Dean’s less damaged than my usual clientele—no obvious injuries, in fact—but no one would mistake him for a young man who’d decided to lie down and take a little nap in the middle of a road.   (For one thing, he’s staring straight out into what promises to be a lovely summer sunset.  The awkward angle of his head pulls his mouth slightly open; a startled expression: death is not quite what he expected it to be). I recognize the stillness, though, a total lack of movement that is eerier for not being immediately obvious.  _Something is wrong with this picture,_ you say, but it takes an instant to realize what, because you're unconsciously waiting for a breath, a twitch, a blink that will never happen.  A stillness not found in nature, that's the true hallmark of death.  It settles on a person's features and renders them somehow unfamiliar, like a well-known room  that becomes foreign when the lights are off.  Some sort of light has gone out, and Dean Winchester is gone. §

I'm standing in the middle of the road, looking down at Dean Winchester's dead body and thinking thinky thoughts when something metallic clicks behind me.  Having seen too many late twentieth-century movies, I know exactly what it is.  Still, it’s a shock to turn around and see Dean pointing a heavy-looking handgun at me.  The gun upsets me more than the dead guy: my life is so weird. Getting shot wouldn’t kill me (for obvious reasons—though it would still hurt like a bitch) but my hands come up automatically.  Damn Hollywood.

“Hey, Dean.  Look, why don’t you put that down and we can talk?”  I know I’ve heard that in a movie somewhere, as a strategy to get the bad guy monologuing about his motives.  I could take a good monologue right about now.  Anything to kill…well, time. Souls can only interact with the physical world with significant concentration and effort.  It took me thirty minutes and a blinding headache to spell out a five-letter word using those dinky magnetic letters when I was dead.  I’m pretty impressed that Dean can manage a handgun.  He’s either had a lot of practice in the five minutes it took me to drive over here, or he’s got amazing willpower.  Either way, of course, he can’t last forever.  Whereas I…well, I’m a little bit immortal.

“Who the hell are you?”  Dean growls.

“George.  I’m George, remember?  I drove you here?  Met you and Sam this morning?”

Dean spits every word. “Do _not_ talk about Sam.  Or I’ll send you right back where you came from, you son of a bitch.”

“Where?  Seattle?” I joke.  Dean doesn’t even crack a smile.  Tough audience, I think, and then realize…of course.  He doesn’t recognize me.  Dean knows my undead persona, Millie; now that he’s dead, he can see the real me. 

“I know I look different,” I babble, because the gun still makes me nervous, “but I really am the same person.  I’m a reaper, I took your soul back there, so it wouldn’t…uh, get stuck, kind of.”

“The demon didn’t send you?”  Dean still sounds wary, but the level of the gun barrel is dropping.  He’s getting tired. “You’ve been following me all day—you’re not here to take me to hell?”

“What?!  No!  I’m…” Jesus, how to explain this? “I’m a third-party contractor.  The middle-man. Middlewoman.  I just get your soul out of your body: don’t know where it goes, don’t know why.”

“Prove it,” he insists.  And I don’t know what to say: I haven’t got any insider information, I can’t tell him the name of his childhood pet or what his dying thought was or even how he died. All I ever had was his name on a post-it. Believe it or not, no one’s ever asked for proof before. Most dead people are actually pretty trusting.  You think they’d freak out, or ask a lot of questions, or have a psychotic break when they see themselves separated from their bodies.  But they’re fairly chill about the whole thing (Rube says it’s because, deep down, everyone knows it’s going to happen, that it’s kind of a relief when it finally does).  Dean Winchester, though, is a fucking hard sell.  

“How can I prove it?”  I demand.

Dean shrugs.  “You can’t,” he says, and then he shoots me.

§

Holy motherfucking _shit_ , it hurts!  Stumbling backwards, right over Dean’s dead body, I land hard on my ass.  I put my hand over the gash in my shoulder and try to curl the rest of my body around it, compressing myself into a tiny little ball so the pain doesn’t tear me apart.  Vaguely, I feel cool spots on my bare arms—Dean’s phantom hands, trying to coax me into relaxing.  _Shit, you’re really—shh, shh, ok, let me see, just move your hand_ He’s talking to me, not angry now, soothing words that I’m not really hearing. I can actually feel the torn skin closing up beneath my fingers, and when it finally does, I take both bloodstained hands and _shove_. 

He ends up sprawled at the edge of the crossroads, and I was right: that trick with the gun took a lot out of him.  His skin is kind of gray and he’s trembling with exhaustion like a fever, eyes huge and staring as I stalk over to him.  I do _not_ feel sorry for him.  Not one little bit. “That _hurt_ , you—you goddamn…jerk!” I’m jittery, my skin jumping with adrenaline, and all I can do is glare at him for a second before I have to move.

“Hey,” he calls after me.  And again, just as I reach the car: “Hey!”

“What?!”

He’s struggling to his feet, shaky, nearly tips over once or twice.  “Thanks.”

“What?” I say again, a little less viciously.

“I said, thanks.  Thank you.  I wouldn’t, uh…” he nods at the corpse, “want to be stuck in there.  So.  Thanks.”

I don’t know what to say: no problem?  just doing my job? I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever been _thanked_ before when Dean clears his throat. “Do me a favor?”  he asks, stuffing his hands in his pockets and giving me a sheepish grin that I’m sure has gotten him many _,_ manyfavors in the past.

“What?”  Getting shot has really limited my vocabulary, but seriously, it seems like the only thing I’ve done since meeting the Family Winchester is ask questions.

“Dig that up?”  he points to an area of turned earth in the center of the crossroads.  It was concealed until I went and tripped over his corpse. “I don’t think I can manage it myself.”

“Well, you did pretty well with the gun, there, Buffy!” 

Dean winces.  “Yeah. Sorry about that.  You…weren’t who I was expecting.”

I want to ask who he was expecting, and what kind of life he’s led that the first thing he did when he realized he was dead was take a gun off his own corpse.  But I’m already moving toward the body.  Goddamn curiosity and that stupid fucking cat.  I get distracted by the dirt I’m digging: it’s loose and dry. The ground, the dusty crossroads, the body itself: all dry, like the summer storm never happened. 

About six inches down, I unearth a flimsy cardboard box that, according to the printed label, once held fifty Pyrodex shotgun pellets.  I get it out of the hole it’s wedged in, slide the lid off, and hold it out so Dean can see the contents.  Ash and sand, a single red thread and a twist of burnt metal.

Dean reaches for the box and his hand goes right through.  He winces and pulls back quickly.  His forehead creases in concentration; the second time, his fingers close around the box and he lifts it from my palm like it’s impossibly fragile.  He turns it over—the contents stream away in a ribbon of white ash.

“Okay,” he says, when the last of it is borne away on the wind. “I’m done.”  Then he turns to look at me.  “What now?”

“Uhm.  Nothing.  You’ll know when you’re supposed to leave.  To go on to…whatever. Until then, we just wait.” 

“Oh.”  Dean runs a hand through his hair.  After a moment: “Do we have to wait here?”

“Not really.”

“Great!”  Dean grins.  “I could do with a milkshake.”

The grin is infectious and, reviewing everything Rube’s ever told me, I really can’t think of any reason _not_ to.  I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?  We’re both dead already. “Okay.  Milkshake it is.”

§

Dean takes a deep breath and steps through the car door. I’m halfway to the car myself when I realize that we’ve forgotten something.

“Uh.  What about—” I jerk my head toward the body, tumbled like a discarded toy on the side of the road, where I’d tripped over it. “I mean, we can’t just…”

“Leave it?” Dean said with a shrug. “Why not?  I don’t need it anymore. Just—close my eyes, would you?  I’m kind of freaking me out.”

Somehow just driving away feels wrong, but I figure—hey—it’s Dean’s body, and if he doesn’t care, why should I?

If you don’t mind my asking,” I begin, unsure of the protocol for this sort of thing, “why did you die?  I mean—what killed you?”

Dean runs a hand up the back of his head, ruffling his hair. “I, uh, stopped breathing?” he says, like this should be obvious.

“Uh, yeah.  But why?”

“It was time.”

“But—”

“I’m a cheap date,” Dean concedes.  “Buy me a milkshake, let me take a look at that shoulder of yours, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

§

I drive back to the highway and stop at the first fast food place I find, my interest in the story outweighing the desire to find Roxy and preen ( _who finally convinced Dean Winchester to up and die already?  Yes, that’s right._ _Girl's got skills._ ) I bring Dean’s milkshake—“and fries!” he yells after me—out to the car and watch, impressed, as he wolfs them down.  It’s less the speed at which he makes the food vanish, mostly at the fact that he’s supposed to be incorporeal. He hasn’t made any of the rookie mistakes: no walking through people, no trying to open doors or expecting other people to see him. Nevertheless, when he concentrates, he seems to be able to interact with the physical world like he's not dead at all.

“You’re good at this,” I admit, unwrapping the straw for my own milkshake.

Around a mouthful of fries: “whafff?”

“Usually people who’ve been reaped aren’t quite so, uh. Solid?”

Dean swallows, shrugs.  “I’ve had some practice,” he says modestly.

“Being _dead_?!” 

He backtracks.  “Not so much dead as…not entirely alive?  There were a couple of months there I—see, there was this trickster…well, really, it all started with..” He doesn’t seem quite sure of how to tell the story, but I’m ok with the idea of death being a non-binary state, so that makes things seem a little easier.  I don’t understand all of the backstory, but the upshot seems to be that the Family Winchester hunts supernatural beings—which is, not surprisingly, more dangerous than the fairytales make it seem.  Dangerous enough that Sam had ended up dead, and Dean has summoned a demon and negotiated a deal: his own life, minus one year, in exchange for Sam’s.

“And my half of the payment came due…” he checks his wrist automatically, before realizing that he’s not wearing his watch, “about an hour ago.”

“Damn,” I say, because I didn’t know there was an installment plan for stuff like this: buy now, pay later.  Of course, I don’t know much about demons, but I imagine they _would_ be sticklers for paying your dues on time. “So you die and he lives?  That was—” I can’t decide on an adjective ( _generous?  Short-sighted?  Fucking insane?_ ) but Dean cuts me off, bristling, like he’s heard enough opinions about his actions.

“My decision, that’s what it was,” he snaps. “And it’s done now, anyway: no going back.”

I snort.  “ _That’s_ for sure.”

Dean watches me, suspicious, but once he gets the idea that I’m not going to try and argue him out of his deal—what good would that do?—he settles back in his seat.

“Sammy’s the brains of this operation, anyway,” he explains.  “He’ll figure out some way to get me back—couldn’t do that if he were dead, now could he?”

I hum noncommittally into my strawberry shake.  As I’ve said…don’t know much about demons, but I do know a little about death: pretty sure it’s not reversible.

Dean looks at me like he can tell what I’m thinking.  “Sam’ll come up with something,” he says firmly.

I look out over the hood: the restaurant lot is part of a larger travel plaza.  Gas station, souvenir shop, lots of long-haul truckers.  I watch a semi angle toward the on-ramp, back to the highway.  I wonder where it’s going. “I follow my sister to the movies, sometimes, just to see her, make sure she’s OK,” I say, and I’m surprised.  That wasn’t what I meant to say at all.

“That’s nothing," Dean scoffs, "I used to drive to California just to sit outside Sam’s apartment.  I mean, not like Sam can’t take care of himself,” he hurries to assure me.  “Hell, he’d probably do a better job of it than I would.  It’s just…”

“Yeah.  I know,” I say.  And I do.

He holds out his packet of fries.  “Younger sister?”

“Yeah.”

He nods like I’ve confirmed something he already knew and we return to watching the trucks in the travel plaza.

“So, what about you?” he says at last.

“What about me?”

“You know my story.  I wanna know yours.  What brings you to a certain crossroads outside Seattle?”

I give him a quick recap—how I’d grown up not far from here, died even closer, and now had a part-time gig reaping souls.  By appointment only. I tell him about the post-it notes.

Dean shakes his head, disbelieving.  “Must be so weird.”

“The reaping?  Takes some getting used to, I guess.”

“No, living in the same town your whole life.”

“It was OK,” I shrug, and it’s not until I’ve said it that I realize it’s true.

§

“So, Daisy’s not really your sister?” he asks next

“She’s not.” 

Dean shrugs equably.  “That’s OK; she’s still hot.”

I cannot believe I am having this conversation. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate hearing that.” 

My straw makes a sharp sucking sound as it reaches the end of my milkshake.  Dean’s already finished his.  He gathers up the empty cups along with the straw wrappers, paper napkins, cold French fries.

It’s too much for one person to carry—especially someone who has a touch-and-go relationship with corporeality—and the wind keeps tugging things out of his hands as he walks across the parking lot to the trashcan.  I follow along, picking up what he drops, and I think he’s hamming up the clutziness just to make me laugh.

He turns suddenly, walking backwards so he can face me. “Hey, George.  Do me a favor?”

“Sure.”  I agree without even wondering what he wants, and I haven’t done that in a while.

“When this is over…I mean, whenever it is that I go—where I’m going?”

“Yeah?” The trashcan, at the edge of the lot, near a picnic table, is the kind with a squirrel proof lid, so I jog ahead to open it for him. 

“Would you go check on Sam?  I mean, you don’t have to talk to him or anything—you could, though, if you want to.  You’re…well, he has this thing for blondes…but, anyway, I could give you some phone numbers.  Friends of ours…Guy outside Sioux Falls. A girl I used to know in Nebraska. Maybe you could just check in on him and, if things aren’t…uh, if he’s not doing all right, you could just call one of them.  Just so someone’s looking after him?”

We’re not supposed to talk to about reaps before they happen for obvious reasons…but fuck Rube’s stupid rules: it seems like the least I can do.  Dean’s dead—who is he gonna tell? I wait by the picnic table until he gets close, so I don’t have to yell. I bite my lip to keep from smiling.  I _never_ have any good news to tell anyone and, not to play favorites, but it seems like Dean could use a little after the day he’s had.

“We can check up on him right now.  My friend Roxy has an appointment with Sam in about an hour,” I tell him, thinking that there may be advantages to reaping families. Undead Older Siblings United. Maybe we’ll get t-shirts made up. “So I know exactly where he’ll be.”

Dean doesn’t smile back.  In fact, his face twists like someone just punched him in the stomach.  Hard.  He blinks, confused, and sinks down onto the bench of the picnic table like he’s lost his balance.  He actually _flickers_ , cutting in and out like a TV with bad horizontal hold.  The trash in his arms blows right through him, cup lids and paper napkins fluttering across the parking lot like miniature flags of surrender. 

“Oh, Jesus,” he whispers hoarsely, staring at me like that will make me take it back. “Oh, God, _Sammy_.” 

I don’t understand.  This is good news.  This is _my good news_.  It’s even better than just getting to _see_ Sam.  Here I’ve risked my ass telling Dean something he shouldn’t even know and he’s sitting there with his head in his hands like it’s the end of his fucking world and—oh.

_Oh._ Shit. Rube says that it’s important for us to remember what it’s like to be alive—when I complain about having to go to work at Happy Times or paying rent or whatever, he says it’s good for me, helps me maintain perspective.  I’ve always thought it sounded like bullcrap.  Like I could ever forget what it was like to be a real, living person.  Like being undead gives you a new set of values or whatever.  Today, for the first time, I realize that I _have_ forgotten. The living are a different culture, now: they live in a different country, and I cannot remember how people do things there.

“I didn’t mean it that way!  I mean, I…Sam doesn’t _kill_ himself,” I say clumsily.  Dean flinches and I try to come up with a better way to say it.  “We don’t…uh, there’s another group in charge of suicides.  Or you know,” I rush ahead, “maybe it’s some kind of mistake.  A post-it meant for somebody else.  That’s been happening a lot lately,” I ramble desperately. 

Dean’s stopped flickering, although he still looks strangely insubstantial.  “Really?”  he asks, and the suspicion is back.  It’s like our little bonding session never happened.  Damn.  I am such a _moron_. 

“Really!”  I try to sound as encouraging as possible, but the truth is that things have been so screwed up lately that I can’t guarantee anything.  All I know is that Sam Winchester has an appointment this evening.  Maybe it’s an error, maybe it’s a suicide. Who the hell knows anymore?

**S. Winchester**   
**Palisade Park  
E.T.D.  8: 37 PM**

Later, after everything, when we’re camped out at Der Waffle Haus late one night, waiting for Rube, I will ask Roxy what happened with S. Winchester.  And she will tell me…which is really all the evidence you need to prove that the Winchesters were somehow different from our usual clientele.  Usually, Roxy doesn’t talk about her reaps.  She’ll talk about the _deaths_ no problem—often going into gloriously gory details _while I’m eating_ —but if the reaps are anything more than names on a post-it to her, she’s never really shown it.   Roxy, as Rube said, can do anything.

On July first, at 8:13 PM, what she’s doing is waiting for Sam Winchester and inspecting an unfortunate grease stain on her uniform sleeve. She’d bitched out the bus driver but good when she’d alighted from the 84 bus (Eastern Hwy. to Palisade Pk.), because she just _got_ the damn thing back from the cleaners and…fine, fine.  You drive on away.  But don’t be parking even an inch outside authorized bus zones: Roxy’s not the sort to forgive and forget.

Shit, she hates these outdoor jobs.  Roxy’s no fucking girl scout: she likes her air conditioning, her indoor plumbing.  She _does not_ like bugs and snakes and sing-a-longs.  Besides, she has allergies. In all her years in Seattle, this is the first time she’s ever been out to the palisades.  Apparently she hasn’t been missing much.  There’s a visitor’s kiosk—closed this late—and a long tarmac drive winding up the hill towards the public amphitheater where the Seattle Symphony plays its summer concerts.  Beyond the amphitheater is a long open lawn with a split-beam security fence ( _Visitors Prohibited Beyond This Point_ ) separating it from the palisades that give the park its name. 

Roxy strolls over to the fence, subtly checking out the last of the picnickers and kite-fliers.  She rests her arms on the top bar and thinks: _this is as far as you can go_.  Already, the lawn is breaking up, getting rocky.  A few yards past the fence and there’s no grass at all, just boulders and shale and eventually nothing: a steep drop into Puget Sound.

When she tells me the story, she says that she would have missed S. Winchester completely if he hadn’t been so damn tall. 

“I just saw his head—you know, that crazy-ass hair—out in the rocks,” she tells me. “Thought it was a goddamn duck or something.” 

“A duck?  Roxy—”

“Shut up!  I don’t know, hate that fresh-air shit.  Anyway, I look a little longer and I see it’s some kid, climbing out over the rocks.  Now, reap or not, I’m still there as an officer of the law, so I yell at him to come back—fuck, they got _signs_ up, telling people not to go out that far.  Rules are rules. Maybe dumbass can’t read.  He sure can’t hear, so I stop hollering and just jump the fence, go to haul his sorry ass back.”

“Hey, you want something done right...” I start, but Roxy’s glare shuts me up fast.

Sam had climbed down over the lip of the cliff by the time Roxy reached him. 

“What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she’d demanded, because no way in hell was she climbing down there after him, getting covered in moss and bird shit and all.

He managed a few more shambling steps towards the edge before turning around, a delayed reaction as Roxy’s voice finally registered.  “First I saw him, thought the fucker was high on something,” Roxy remarks.  Shoes unlaced and shirt mis-buttoned, Sam had looked totally out of it—“like he just woke up” was how Roxy described it, and she’s probably right on both counts.  I imagine Sam, his shoulder snapped back into place, pumped full of whatever no-brand painkillers he could find, waking up in some motel to find his brother’s car in the lot, his wristwatch on the nightstand, his clothes in the closet and the brother himself gone.

Sam held out one trembling hand; nestled in his palm was something on a string.  (“Wait,” I interrupt Roxy’s retelling.  “Was it _string_ , or was it maybe leather?” I ask, thinking of the cord I’d glimpsed around his neck just before T. McMillan went off to her great reward. “Fuck if I know,” Roxy had sniffed.  “Now who is telling this story?”)

 When Sam looked up at Roxie, his face was slick with tears, their tracks cutting through old blood and new grime.  “He…took it off,” Sam said, genuinely mystified and so quiet that Roxie could barely hear him.  “It was his protection—and he took it _off_.  Why would he do that?” he asked, pleading for an answer.

“Look, hon,” Roxy swears the endearment just slipped out.  Christ, the kid just looked so fucking _distraught_ —for the first time it occurred to her that he might go over the edge before she can pop his soul. (“He does that, I’ma have to go after him, kill him my own self. That’s the only reason I care so much,” she insists, “Boy cheats death, it comes outta _my_ paycheck.”). 

Sam watched her suspiciously, taking his eyes off her only to drag his sleeve across his tearstained face and, fuck, Roxy wished he hadn’t done that.  Makes him look twelve fucking years old.  “Look, hon.  Why don’t you bring that over here?  Promise I won’t take it…just for safekeeping.  Not, you know, so close to the edge there.” 

“C’mon,” she coaxed, lying flat out on the higher ground now, uniform be damned.  She’d contemplated a ninja move: jump down onto the rock shelf and tag the boy before he could jump, but for all he looked like a kid, he was pretty big.  Tall and fast and, hell, after the day she’d had, she wasn’t going to risk it.

Sam took a step closer to her. 

“That’s right, babe, just right on over here. There you go…”

Another step. He had one hand out for balance; the other, the one with the string that I just _knew_ must be Dean’s neckace, he cradled against his chest.  He chewed on his lower lip, eyes darting back and forth, looked ready to jump out of his own skin, so Roxy contented herself with holding out one hand…closer…closer.  Finally, she could reach down and brush his forearm.

It was like touching wet fingers to a stripped wire: she could feel the jolt of it deep into her shoulder. 

“Hmm,” I remark to my iced tea.  Dean had been among the genetic minority that could feel their souls leave, so it wouldn’t have surprised me if Sam could, too…but I’d never heard of a case where the _reaper_ could feel it. 

Roxy nodded at my surprise. “I’m telling you, baby boy’s soul? That shit _burned_.”

Instinctively, she’d pulled her hand back.  Sam, who didn’t seem to notice, stepped away.

“Wait,” he said, thoughtfully.  Winding up like a major league pitcher, he hurled the necklace as far as he can, out into the Sound, which is cold even in July.  Roxie’s gaze follows it automatically—“took my eyes off the kid for a moment, just a second,” she tells me later—and she looks back just in time see him overbalance. 

  §

Time doesn’t slow down when you die, the way it’s shown in the movies.  In fact, time speeds up: the movies slow things down to allow for the deathbed confessions and the long backlit voiceover and whatnot.  Real life…well, it’s over before you know it.  One second, Sam was turning away from the water.  The next second he’d stumbled on a dragging shoelace, tripped onto something that squeals—a graveling, of course—jumped back…too far.  There was a spray of loose stones as Sam tried to regain his balance, barely time for a startled shout, and then an ugly _crack_ as his chin hit rock.   From the way he falls, Roxy can tell his spine is broken.  She cannot see where he lands.

Roxy clambered back over the fence and wiped her hands on her pants—it took a moment to find a clean space.  Getting the grass-stains out was gonna be a bitch and she doesn’t even _know_ what that is on her sleeve.

“Try hydrogen peroxide?”

Roxy turned.  “Shit.  Seriously?”

 “Works on bloodstains,” Sam shrugged. “Try Vaseline on the motor oil. Hey—my brother’s a slob; I have some experience.” He massaged his left shoulder, the one he’d dislocated just that morning when he and Dean....  “Was a slob.”

A spasm of anguish crossed Sam’s face, and turned away, hoisting himself up to sit on the crossbar of the fence, looking out over the water to the dying sunset.

“Sam Winchester, I presume,”  Roxy had said, and it was funny to finally be introduced  So.”  she glanced around, waiting for the next world to make itself known.  “What went into the water?”  she asked finally.

“Amulet.”

“Huh.”

“It was—it protects life.  That’s why you couldn’t reap Dean this morning: he was wearing it.”

Roxy examined her nails.  “Don’t know anyone named Dean.”

“It’s ok,” Sam said, soothingly, like _he_ isn’t the one just been reaped.  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.  I know how it works.  Read all about it.  There wasn’t really a tour group on campus this morning.  And that guy in line with us at the courthouse this morning, those people out by the old hotel—they were waiting for us, right?”

Roxy kept her eyes on the horizon. “If this amulet’s so valuable, why’d you go throw it in the water? I mean, if you’d been holding it when you tried your little swandive there, you’d still be alive, right?””

 “Puget Sound is an estuary: freshwater from the Cascade watershed, but also a lot of ocean.”

Roxy waited for an explanation. “’Fraid the Parks Department don’t hire dead boys,” she snapped at last, “so all that memorizing won’t do you no good.”

“That amulet is out there somewhere,” Sam waved toward the sunset, “under about 500 feet of saltwater.  Demons don’t like salt.  I...couldn’t think of any safer place to put it.”

“You didn’t think to keep it, brain boy, to save your own self?”

Sam shrugged again.  “I didn’t want it.”

“Sweetheart, you just fell off a damn _cliff_.  Seems like you could’ve used it!”

Sam kicked his heels and looked off at the sunset.  The conversation is over.

“So,” Roxy said, finally, cause standing around with a dead guy is weird enough when it’s not gloaming.  “You read a lot, do ya?”

“Hmm?”

“You said you, uh…read about reapers,”  she lowered her voice.  “That’s not book-of-the-month club stuff, you know.”

“Yeah,”  Sam conceded, “I read.”

“You ever hear that if you save a man’s life, you’re responsible for him?”

“Sure.”

(“Ha!”  I cackle loudly enough that a few of the other Waffle Haus patrons stare.  “You thought I was making that up.” 

“Just confirming my sources,” Roxy sniffs, sounding just like a cop.)

“All y’all crazy,” she’d told Sam flatly.  “How does that make sense?  I save you, so I gotta keep saving you?”

“It has to do with destiny,” Sam explained.  “People used to believe that you couldn’t die unless the gods wished for you to die.  So…the gods take away their protection, right?  How can you help but die?  But if something happens, someone saves you—well, they screwed up your destiny.  You’re alive, but unprotected.  Who is responsible for that? Well, whoever wrecked your destiny.”

He talked with his hands, laying out the logic and…well, Roxy still thought it was a crazy idea, but he was really into it.  Really seemed to care that his explanation made sense. 

“You ever thought about teaching school?”  she asked, not quite sure where the question had come from.

Sam looked at her, confused.  “Uh…no.”

“Well, little late now…but, you know, maybe next time around…” She trailed off.  Jesus fuck, what was she? A career counselor?

Sam was watching her with a half-smile on his face. “Now I’ve got a question for you,” he said.  “Do I have to go to Dean, or d’you think he comes to me?”

“What?”

“I’m dead.  And I’m still here.  Dean’s dead—where is he?”

“Oh, no.”  Roxy put up her hands.  “Oh, no, no, honeychild, that is _not_ how it works.  There’s not gonna _be_ some kind of celestial reunion.  We’re just waiting out your time here—shouldn’t be long—and then you’ll go on your way and that’s that.”

Sam had looked puzzled.  “Wait—what?”

“I _said_ , you on your own, kid.  That’s the way it goes.”

§

“And,” Roxy announces to me, “that’s exactly how it would’ve gone if you hadn’t shown up with that troublemaker!”

I nearly snort iced tea out my nose, because _troublemaker_ is innocent compared to some of the names Roxy had applied to Dean. She knows what I’m thinking and rolls her eyes.  “This is a family restaurant, George!”

I choose to ignore her new reverence toward all things familial.  “Sorry.  I couldn’t stop him.  He had a gun!”

“George, you’re _already dead_.” 

I shrug and sip.  I never actually say that Dean forced me to Palisade Park at gunpoint, because he didn’t.  In fact, I was the one who got him into the car, mostly because he looked like he might just blow away if I didn’t.   Into the car, and then out of it when we got to the park.  Up the hill, past the amphitheater.  I swear I could have walked him right of a cliff and gotten no response.   Until he saw Sam, that is, sitting on the fence near Roxy, the two of them silhouetted against the darkening sky. 

I’d like to say it was just like a Hallmark special, with the two of them running across the evening field, into each other’s arms.  But it was more like “Dude, are you for real?”  “Seriously, dude, do I need to break out the holy water?”  “Try it and I’m bringing the Latin.”  “Whatever, dude, your pronunciation’s so bad…”  Reggie and I would have done much better. 

There was a hug, though.  Long enough and tight enough that I thought worried about their oxygen intake until I remembered that they were already dead.  Behind me, Roxy started muttering about _getting a room_ , but even as she said it, the night was starting to shimmer and twist. 

“The afterlife…looks like Route 66?”  Dean says skeptically.

“It’s different for everybody,” I put in quickly.

Dean whispers out the side of his mouth. “What’s it look like to you?”

Sam shrugs, “Uh, route 66.”

“That’s not right,” Dean says immediately, appealing to me like _I_ could do something about it.  “Sam ‘n I are…that is, we—we’re not going to the same place.”

“Looks like you are,” Roxy replies dryly.

“No, see…”  Dean looks like he’s going to launch into an explanation—demons, deals, the whole nine yards, but then Sam grabs his sleeve.

“Let’s go.”

“Wha—seriously?”

“Yeah.  I mean, we can’t stay here, right?  We’re dead.”

“Well, when you put it like that…I mean, I was only sticking around waiting for you to catch up.”

“Oh, waiting for _me_?  Dude, I was here first…”

“Man, I was _born first_!”

“I mean here in the park, you jerk…”

"Bitch."

"Moron."

They go bickering off into the sunset—or, where the sunset would be if it weren’t shining dimly through a hazy highway floating three feet above the ground.  At the last minute, Dean turns.  “Car keys are in my jacket pocket.  Take care of her!”  Sam jogs his shoulder.  Dean elbows him back.  The highway fades.  Somewhere to our right, a few early fireworks bloom silently in the sky, too far away for us to hear. 

  §

“So,” Rube says, sliding into the booth next to Roxy, “D. Winchester didn’t go gently into that good night, huh?”

I glance down at my bloodstained t-shirt.  “Not so much, no.”

“But he did go?”

I nod.  “Sam, too.”

“ _Finally,_ ” Rube sighs like a leaking balloon.  “Kiffany!” he calls, “some coffee for my friends here.  We’re celebrating.”

“None for me.  I’m going home to check on Daisy.  She’s probably caught Mason’s cold by now. Want a ride?”

Roxy gives me her patented _bitch, please_ expression. “George, I want a _car_.  Did I tell you I was done with the bus?  Oh, yes, I am so _over_ the bus…”

“Hmm, I don’t know.  Are you a responsible car owner?”  I ask, deadpan, as we stroll out of the restaurant.  “Maybe I should see if Daisy needs a car…”  I toss her the keys to the convertible and slide into the 1967 Impala that we found parked in the lot at the Golden West Motel. I had fished Dean’s shirt out from the wheelwell of the car before we left Palisades Park, found the key in the pocket, along with the Golden West Motel receipt.  Dean had paid up through the week before he’d gone to meet…whatever…out on that utility road.  Roxie had driven it over here, following behind me. The shirt is still in the convertible, the receipt stuffed into the cupholder. He'd paid up through the end of the week so his brother would have someplace to go. Somehow, thinking about that detail still makes me tear up. 

I rub my eyes with the back of my hand, and try to turn the gesture into a wave as Roxy pulls out in her new—my old—car.

Through the window of Der Waffle Haus, I can see Kiffany bringing Rube his coffee.  He gestures at the empty booth and she laughs, calls something to the short-order cook, and sits down.  I watch them chatting for a moment before putting the car into reverse.  Good.  I’m glad he has someone to talk to, and she’s got a little company for a quiet late-shift. Life is a one-way trip, Rube likes to say—and sometimes your flight gets bumped and things are over sooner than you expect—but it's nice to have a companion for the road.

 

 


End file.
